The Harper’s Index, trademarked by Harper’s Magazine, doesn’t use much verbiage to comment on the state of the world. It simply lets the numbers speak for themselves. For example, the May 2000 Index reports that the ratio between the number of hotel rooms planned for the Las Vegas Venetian Hotel and the total number of hotel rooms in all of Venice is 1 to 1.

As we all know, statistics can tell everything, and they can tell nothing. But a quick excursion through the world-wide web reveals that when it comes to ironies, professional licensing can produce numbers that rank right up there with the best. So, with gratitude to Harper’s, here are some indices from the world of licensing, discipline, and enforcement in recent months.

100,000. Amount, in dollars, of unpaid child-support debts Ohio physician Stephen Sveda accumulated over three years, despite threats, warnings, and lawsuits (Source: Plain Dealer, 2/7/2000)

1. Days Dr. Sveda took to repay child support debt in full after receiving a letter this year from the State Medical Board of Ohio revoking his license (Source: Plain Dealer, 2/7/2000)

12. Percentage decrease in number of malpractice suits filed against Massachusetts physicians in the two years after the state started posting malpractice histories on the Internet, despite physician predictions that public profiles would lead to more lawsuits (Source: Boston Herald: 3/1/2000)

40. Percentage decrease in the number of first-time takers of the certified public accountant exam between 1990 and 1998, when several states began

requiring 150 hours of college-level accounting study instead of 120 (Source: Accounting Today, May 2000)

25. Number of new states that will begin enforcing a 150-hour requirement for CPAs in the next decade (Source: Accounting Today, May 2000)

0. Correlation, in a study sponsored by the California State Board of Accountancy, which supports increasing the CPA educational requirement to 150 semester units, between the number of semester units CPA candidates complete and their performance on any section of the national exam (Source: National Association of State Boards of Accountancy)

0. Number of words in the California accountancy board’s website report of the study’s findings that describe the lack of relationship between semester units and exam performance (Source: http://www.dca.ca.gov/cba)

96. Number of cases randomly selected by the state auditor in which Illinois patients sued a doctor for negligence and reached an out-of-court settlement for more than $500,000 (Source: Chicago Tribune, 2/25/2000)

52. Number of audited cases that the state Medical Disciplinary Board closed without reviewing the patients’ medical record (Source: Chicago Tribune, 2/25/2000)

100. Percentage of several hundred mammograms that New York physician Padma Ram performed that the county health board ordered redone in 1993 because of their poor quality (Source: New York Post, 3/5/2000)

0. Number of days since 1993 Dr. Ram was barred from practicing medicine (Source: New York Post, 3/5/2000)

3,000,000. Value, in dollars, of the Texas home of Eric Scheffey, the physician who has paid the most in malpractice claims in the US and was known among medical residents as "Eric the Red" due to his patients’ tendency to bleed heavily during surgery (Source: Detroit News, 5/10/2000)

100. Percentage of the Texas medical board lay members who voted unsuccessfully to revoke Scheffey’s license in 1995 (Source: Detroit News, 5/10/2000)

100. Percentage of the physician members of the Texas medical board who voted successfully to block revocation of Scheffy’s license in 1995 (Source: Detroit News, 5/10/2000)

82,000. Amount, in dollars, that the Idaho Board of Pharmacy spent on a computer system designed to track drug abuse (Source: Idaho Office of Performance Evaluation, June 1999)

72. Percentage of prescription drug-abuse complaints made to the board after the computer system was installed that were never investigated. (Source: Idaho Office of Performance Evaluation, June 1999)

20. Morgan Lamb’s percentile score on the California bar exam in February 1985, when he failed

99. Morgan Lamb’s percentile score on the California bar exam in July 1985, when he passed with the third highest score in the state

10. Number of years Laura Beth Salant lost her law license for posing as her husband Morgan Lamb during the California July 1985 bar exam so that he could get a passing grade (Source: Los Angeles Times, 10/4/99)

For a look at the real Harper’s Index—which invites you to add statistics of your own—go to http://www.harpers.org/harpers-index.