Did 4% of Americans Really Drink Bleach Last Year?

One of the most challenging elements of social science research is that researchers must often rely on data that comes from humans — and humans are notoriously unreliable. When the CDC published a report in the summer of 2020 stating that 4% of respondents reported ingesting household chemicals in an attempt to ward off the coronavirus, many people were (understandably) alarmed. Researchers who replicated the study, with the addition of some basic quality control measures to eliminate inaccurate data, got very different results. In this piece, the author discusses how inattentive or mischievous respondents can accidentally or intentionally skew data, as well as what researchers, reporters, and the public at large can do to identify these issues and avoid jumping to conclusions based on misleading information.