Southerners are the most sinful people in the United States.That’s right, according to a group of geographers from Kansas State University, Southerners indulge in most of the seven deadly sins more than anyone else in the United States — and I almost believed them. But after a little bit of research, it turns out that things aren’t quite what they seem and that the old adage “You can’t believe everything you read” still applies — even when it comes to academic works.Maybe it’s the heat that makes us cherish our days or maybe it’s the rich food and dedication to distilled spirits, but southerners do seem to enjoy their lives a little bit more than most — perhaps that’s why I almost went ahead and believed the project from the start.Everything seemed pretty legitimate at first. The project entitled “The Spatial Distribution of the Seven Deadly Sins Within Nevada” was presented at a 2009 geography conference in Las Vegas, and the researchers’ methodology was sound, if not rigorous.The researchers took readily available data from the U.S. Census and law enforcement authorities and used a computer program — Geoda spatial modeling software — to map the data to geographic coordinates.  In this case, they produced a county by county map using color depth to show where the sins were most prominently displayed.  While the title indicates a focus on Nevada alone, the project actually used national data.Lust, Gluttony, Pride and Wrath were at the highest levels in areas that were located in the Deep South according to theidata.   As for the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed is apparently located almost entirely in California, Envy makes its summer home in Florida and Sloth is spread fairly evenly throughout the US. The results are presented in a clean and sophisticated manner, but like all academic presentations we often ask “what does this really mean?” It turns out it may not really mean much of anything.Looking a little bit further into the data we find out how the researchers went about deciding what exactly constitutes the sins.The researcher used aggregate data that served as a proxy for actual measurements of the Seven Deadly Sins. Proxy measures do not actually measure a social phenomenon directly, but the measures are usually close enough that the difference is negligible.The practice of using proxy measures is quite common in social science and really isn’t that big of a deal — if it’s done well and the proxies actually function as they should. But the proxies used by the researchers in this circumstance seem sketchy at best.Greed, for example, is computed by comparing the total income of all people living below the poverty line in a county. Lust was calculated by adding up the number of STD cases reported in each county per year and Pride was calculated as an aggregate of all the other sins.The problem here is not technical proficiency — I’m fairly sure the authors were more than capable of plugging this information into the software and churning out the maps. The problem is that I do not for one second believe that this data is attached to any of the  Seven Deadly Sins.Of all the sins in this report, Lust is undoubtedly my favorite because it misses the mark so heavily.  While the authors want you to believe they are really tapping into the parts of the country with the most Lust, they’re actually just measuring the parts that have the highest STD infection.Incidentally those areas are also featured in the Greed category.  Previous research has shown that areas with high rates of poverty also have higher STD infection rates.All the authors have done is attach a label that is rife with religious meaning to simple data.This actually undermines the legitimate issues involved here.  The Lust circumstance alone fails to take into account the heavy social issues involved for people living in those conditions and makes it seem like they are simply horny, poor and sinful.In an ideal world people would see through these misleading categories and data and ask hard questions that challenge the researchers to apply their work to the real world.Instead, local newspapers reported the information blindly and actually reported the numbers for certain counties as though they were attached to some meaningful information.Instead of reporting the STD rates or poverty rates, The Las Vegas Sun reported about how lusty and greedy Clark County, Nev., is — I find this depressing.Both academics and members of the news media are trained to ask these hard questions. They are trained to do work the average person can’t or won’t.Things become problematic when the pressure to be published or gain notoriety overcomes the need to produce meaningful work.It’s not enough to just read everything that comes out — we should always question it and ask “is this meaningful?”Skylar Gremillion is a 26-year-old sociology graduate student from Plaucheville.—–Contact Skylar Gremillion at [email protected]