Lies, damned lies and statistics

Here at Finextra we try to maintain a healthy level of scepticism when it comes to research and surveys commissioned by firms with a vested interest in getting a certain kind of result. We're inundated with them and most get binned.

CPP offers card fraud insurance so it's hardly surprising they want to talk up the problem. But they commissioned a survey of a reasonable number of people from a respectable enough organisation, so Finextra, along with a lot of the national press, followed it up.

And it doesn't appear to be the survey that was faulty - it was the accompanying press release. It claimed 12 million Brits had fallen victim to card fraud in 2008.

Apacs didn't hold back in dismissing this as wildly inaccurate, and it was right.

CPP has now responded to Finextra's request for an explanation, saying the research suggests 12 million people have ever been had by card fraudsters.

Nick Jones from CPP says "an error was made" and the firm "apologises for any confusion caused".

Well, I'm not questioning whether the error was an honest mistake or not but what can't be disputed is that the eye-catching, incorrect figure got CPP a lot of unwarranted publicity, whilst the fact it was wrong doesn't appear to have generated anything like the same response.