MARK TWAIN complained that there were lies, damn lies and statistics. I’ve also heard that 90 percent of statistics are wrong.

This comes to mind when thinking about a recent study published in Forbes magazine that rates Mississippi number one in the nation for government corruption.

Researchers from Indiana University and City University of Hong Kong looked at more than 25,000 convictions for violations of federal corruption laws between 1976 and 2008 to find the rate of corruption among government officials in each state.

There is one glaring problem with this study. It is based on corruption convictions. So the state best at catching, prosecuting and convicting corruption would, naturally, have the most convictions. States that didn’t prosecute corruption would have the least convictions.

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