The phrase "lies, damn lies and statistics" is ascribed usually to Mark Twain and interpreted usually to mean that when numerical data seems to support your preconceptions it is valid, but when it does not you can disregard it safely. What might have been a better phrase would have been "there are those who cannot interpret statistics, those who choose to falsify them and raw data which is subject to misrepresentation". Some recent examples of data's being... (GunPolicy.org)