I'm trying to track the origin and use of the phrase 'lies, damned lies and
   statistics'. Most of us attribute to Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield.
   But research suggests it is more problematic. As far as I can see, Mark
   Twain was mainly responsible for publicising the phrase (like many others).
   He seems to have launched the custom of attribution to Beaconsfield.
   On http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htm there is some
   research. It includes the following which suggests to me that the phrase was
   current at the end of the 19thC. The author uncovered the following:
   Sir Robert Giffen wrote as follows:

   An old jest runs to the effect that there are three kinds of comparison
   among liars. There are liars, there are outrageous liars, and there are
   scientific  experts.  This  has lately been adapted to throw dirt upon
   statistics. There are three degrees of comparisons, it is said, in lying.
   There  are  lies, there are outrageous lies, and there are statistics.
   Statisticians can afford to laugh at and profit by jokes at their expense.
   There is so much knowledge which is unobtainable except by statistics,
   especially the knowledge of the condition and growth of communities and
   growth of communities in the mass, that, even if the blunders in using
   statistics were greater and more frequent than they are, the study would
   still be indispensable. But just because we can afford to laugh at such
   jests we should be ready to turn them to account, and it is not difficult to
   discover one of the principal occasion for the jest I have quoted, and
   profit by the lesson.

   "On international statistical comparisons", Economic Journal 2 (6) (1892),
   209-238, first paragraph. In a footnote it is stated that the paper was read
   at a meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science
   at Hobart in January 1892.

   So really used the phrase first? One begins to suspect that Beaconsfield
   never in fact used it, and that those who wished to use it, referred to
   Beaconsfield for spurious authority. In which case the historical question
   is not when Beaconsfield first used it but who first attributed it to him.
   Any other information would be useful.

   Regards
   Alan Freeman