Unproven claims about broadband

40,000 people losing their jobs at Verizon know the job impact of broadband can be negative as well as positive. Verizon has the most advanced broadband network in the Western world and is massively cutting staff. The local bookstore that dies when people order from Amazon, the newspapers dying across the country as readers shift to the web, and eventually the schools displaced if on-line education actually grows are further evidence that broadband destroys jobs as well as creates them. Honest academics find a very mixed picture that suggests the net effect is very modest at best. The only honest answer looking at the data is Professor Shane Greenstein's "We don't know the effect of broadband on the economy." Evidence-based medicine is transforming medical practice and research, undoubtedly savings lives, and I've been working to develop evidence-based policy. Washington is talking "data-driven decisionmaking but that's worthless if the data are corrupt and untested. There are claims being made in D.C. that range from unlikely to almost certainly untrue. Many originate from work paid for by the Bells then picked up and repeated by others who want to believe and won't examine the evidence.