Making a Difference

I was just in a meeting where many leaders of the organization were debating a topic, and this had me baffled. Not the nature of the topic - I got that part. I couldn't understand why they were even having the discussion. The heart of the matter was: one piece of data was not being reported in advance of the final status of that piece of data, and we need this data so we can make a difference in peoples' lives. The only problem is that the final data status shows it makes no difference whether the data came in early or not.

20+ people thought they made a difference, or could have, yet the data shows otherwise. Instead of facing the facts that effort did not yield results, the debate raged about getting the advance data. This led me to wondering why these people did not turn their attention to an area where they MIGHT make a difference. A couple theories came up:
A) It's easier to pretend (and even believe) you make a difference than to actually do it;
B) Gut feelings overrule data - the people KNOW they are making a difference;
C) It's easy to believe that I'M making a difference, while others are dropping the ball, so the data disguises the real impact of MY effort.

Examples:
A) Congress, those that love the status quo
B) GW Bush
C) Most activists

Obviously, I'm making some generalizations, but my point is we rarely monitor for the effect we hope to have. For those really want to make a difference, sometimes the effort is the reward and the result gets lost. For activists, I think it's a way to stay positive since results so rarely follow close to the activity. Think how long it took for: women's suffrage, civil rights advances, and legalized abortion. Think how long it's taken for universal healthcare, and we aren't there yet.

What I wonder: could activists have a faster and more profound impact if they monitored their effort-result propositions and adjust to increase results?