My brother took a poli-sci course (ish) and they had that big ass map of "freedom" by FreedomHouse. When I pointed out that it's garbage, he got defensive and said "just because they don't publish what criteria they rank countries by, doesn't mean it's totally useless". I had a lot of fun dunking on him after that one, and he even admitted that I was kind of right, so I guess the small victories count.