Is this general stupid?

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has a disturbing article about the Army’s non-competitive contract to purchase more M-4 rifles.  For some reason, I’m not competent to post a complete comment on the WoC blog, so I’ll do it here:

"While the M-4 finished fourth out of four, 98 percent of all the rounds fired from it went off down range as they were supposed to do," Brig. Gen. [Mark] Brown [commander of Program Executive Office Soldier and the Natick Soldier Systems Center] said. "However, the three other candidates did perform better at about a 99 percent rate or better, which is a mathematically statistically significant difference, but not an operationally statistical difference." [Defense Industry Daily, "The USA’s M4 Carbine Controversy"]

This bozo is running a Program Executive Office?  The key numbers are the 2% jam rate for the M-4, and the <1% rates for its competitors.  Any first-year business student knows that the difference between rates of 1% and 2% isn’t 1%, it’s 100%!

The distinction between "statistically significant" and "operationally significant" is telling: statistical tests can only be "spun" by fiddling the confidence levels or cheating on the test conditions, while operational significance is whatever the client specifies.  Ethically, statistical AND operational significance should be stated in writing BEFORE the tests are conducted, so no one moves the goalposts.  Where’s General Brown’s test specs and testing protocol?  I suspect that even those radical risk-takers at the FDA would laugh his test protocols and results right out of town.

This is yet another variation of the standard "lies, damned lies, and statistics" bullsh1t propagated by politicians and bureaucrats who have an axe to grind, a tax to raise, or another barrel of pork to deliver.  The numbers always get twisted to fit their agenda, and if they caught out, why it’s the fault of us egghead statisticians–Hell, no one can understand all that complicated math stuff!  Well get these complicated numbers, assh0le:  in cancer research, a 2-fold change in survival odds means thousands of lives prolonged and millions in income for a pharmaceutical company.  You saw a 3.7-fold improvement in weapon reliability, and said "No big deal."  Now I remember why I retired when I did–I had to listen to this kind of crap all too often.  General, I hope the next infantryman you encounter spits on you.

Mike Anderson, LtCol, USAF (retired)