The Proofiness of the Politically Correct Rape

Wendy McElroy
Jan. 16, 2015

A legion of the politically correct who make a living from the alleged oppression of women were gleeful and almost goofy with proofiness this week. The incident is a window into how statistical myths are created.

Charles Seife, a journalist and a professor at New York University, coined the term proofiness as a corollary to an earlier term coined by comedian Stephen Colbert: truthiness. Truthiness was defined as "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true." It became the American Dialect Society's 2005 Word of the Year because it embodied a cultural zeitgeist that haunted the socio-political narrative of our time.

Proofiness is "the art of using bogus mathematical arguments to prove something that you know in your heart is true — even when it's not." It should have been the Word of the Year for 2010 when Seife's book Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception was published. A new study gives the term a second chance for fame, as it points to the dark side of math.

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