Just as &quot;Five&quot; is really just a rule of thumb as pointed out by other people, &quot;Why&quot; is really just a rule of thumb too. &quot;What can we do to prevent the underlying problem?&quot; just isn&#x27;t as catchy, but it&#x27;s closer to what you should be really asking.<p>&quot;People suck at statistics&quot; is not an answer to that question. &quot;Train people&quot; is <i>an</i> answer, but only <i>an</i> answer. You&#x27;ve also got &quot;something to make us more robust to bad statistics&quot; and, no sarcasm, &quot;trust the statistics less in the future&quot;, and several other such things. Another one I&#x27;d consider, for instance, is that if some set of statistics is truly bringing negative value to the process, stop collecting them.<p>Also, &quot;we&#x27;ve got fundamental management issues&quot; can be a valid answer. If you&#x27;re in an engineering environment but your management isn&#x27;t able to work that way, try to do something about it. In the end, it is not out of the question for the process to produce &quot;I need a different job&quot;, though I think one has a professional obligation to at least <i>try</i> to fix the underlying problems first.<p>This is a process in which neither blind idealism nor blind cynicism is the road to success. If you&#x27;re just getting cynical answers, that&#x27;s not a reflection of the process, that&#x27;s a reflection of your cynicism being too strong. Tone it down. Don&#x27;t get rid of it. I would never suggest getting rid of it. But tone it down. And get more specific than &quot;people generally suck&quot; or anything that is simply a variant on that.