Why Special-Interest Groups Are Motivated to Foment Fear

Such groups frequently downplay good news about their area of concern to sustain their own legitimacy. But this comes at a cost.

LBJ’s infamous “Daisy” commercial from his 1964 campaign

Some published studies detonate into a mushroom cloud. Others bloom with good news.

This year, the coming of spring brought a latter such paper.

Since 1999, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System had charted a shocking doubling of the annual maternal mortality rate and then a sudden spike in 2021. But a new study quite hopefully suggested that the death rate has likely held stable throughout the 21^st century and remains on par with rates in the U.K. and Canada.

The apparent egregious miscount, the investigators asserted, was the result of faulty CDC surveillance practices that relied on a checkbox denoting recent pregnancy, which was added to death certificates in 2003. Thereafter, nearly all deaths among women categorized as recently pregnant were counted as maternal mortalities, inflat…