Lies & Co.

Lies & Co. is a column from the Scious blog— Scious is a data analytics consultancy that helps companies large and small make sense of data.

Rules of the column

1. Every article published on Lies & Co. must tell a story grounded on well researched, referenced, and reproducible investigation.
2. Every article must contain one (and only one) lie.
3. The end of every article must reveal the lie.

Why would a blog make it a point to lie?

Ever heard of a game called Two Truths and a Lie? That’s basically this blog column except we’ll tell as many truths as we want.

Lies & Co., like Two Truths and a Lie, isn’t about spreading falsehoods. It’s about encouraging critical thinking. Scious believes that truth is actually really hard to find. It is our hope that by telling readers “something you’re reading is flawed” we can make a small behavioral change in the way content is consumed — that more people will consume information as skeptics.

In an age where it’s technically feasible to swing elections from a laptop and silently steal identities from 140 million people, the cost of just trusting our newsfeeds and institutions are just too high.

To that we say, "don’t trust anyone. Not even us."

Now, true to the publication, I reveal this article’s lie. There is currently no "we" at Scious. There is only I, Andrew.

… and I promise the lies will get better.