Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Can US Citizens Trust Government Data? (msn.com)
mmell writes: An editorial in the Washington Post and made publicly available via an MSN news feed has asked the question: "In the Trump administration era of 'alternative facts,' what happens to government data?" Given that Slashdot members (and readers) may represent a somewhat more in-the-know crowd on matters concerning data integrity and trustworthiness, I thought this would be a good place to ask: can we trust (or has anyone ever really trusted) government data? One might think government data would all be cut 'n' dried and not subject to manipulation, but I personally remember when government data back early in the Reagan presidency went from reporting nearly 15% unemployment nationwide to well under 6% by redefining what "unemployed" meant. So . . . has government data ever been trustworthy, and is it still so?
We could never trust the government. Data or action. Look at the drug war. At the Iraq war. At McCarthyism. At Kent State. Look at congress, at the obvious incompetence (series of pipes, anyone?) and craziness of the representatives. Look at the superstition that they pander to. Look at what the supreme court does in the face of what they swore an oath to the constitution to do.
The government lies. Panders. Pushes entirely false and misleading agendas. The politicians and judges violate their oaths. Some of the agencies, such as the veterans administration, do incredibly bad jobs.
This shouldn't be the dawn of mistrust. Anyone who trusted the government was being, at the very least, gullible.
It sure as hell is full daylight of distrust, though. Good to see people waking up. Perhaps there is something to thank President Trump for, then.
Silly Partisan Slashdot Editors want to make this into a Trump Thing, but they are too young or uneducated to remember things like the (first, of many) Food Pyramid, job creation data scams, alternative energy revelations, and... the list is long. Google "erroneous government data." And stop contributing to the Fake News epidemic with these disingenuous strawman-centric pseudo-stories...
>> I wouldn't trust anything coming from Trumps office for shit...
Would you have honestly trusted data coming from Hillary's office had she become president?
President Trump's press conferences indicate that what you say is not true. They proudly admit to the use of 'alternative facts' so, no, things are not 100% the same.
I personally remember when government data back early in the Reagan presidency went from reporting nearly 15% unemployment nationwide to well under 6% by redefining what "unemployed" meant.
Under Obama, we stopped counting people as unemployed if they gave up looking for a job. Such people are difficult to track is the argument.
Reagan is the one who stopped counting people not looking for work. Talk radio started describing these people as "discouraged" during Obama's administration, but they were not counted among the Bush unemployed, either.
Sorry, but actual progressives, as opposed to Democratic party faithful, knew Obama was not to be trusted from the first. One does not have a meteoric rise through Chicago politics if they're not dirty, after all. We weren't voting **for** him as much as voting **against** the other moron. I'm not sure why Libertardians can't figure out that actual liberals and progressives aren't tied to the thoroughly-corrupted Democratic party, we just don't have any viable alternatives in most elections.
On the other hand, while I certainly didn't expect a new FDR I don't think any of us were prepared to discover that he was Bush-lite.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The BBC is not really a unbiased source either. During the 2nd Gulf War (you know the one where the cheese eating surrender monkeys didn't want to join in?) I used to switch channels from the BBC to Euronews for a more rounded view of what was happening. Euronews, I believe, is/was run out of France - the cheese eating surrender monkeys! I still prefer Euronews for TV, I also watch France24 and prefer Reuters for my online news as so many sites are now for simpletons that can only deal with their news in pictures.
Captcha: Shock&Awe
I take it you haven't read the Bible. God isn't trustable either.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Yes....
Trump, Time magazine interview, Aug. 20, 2015: Our real unemployment rate–in fact, I saw a chart the other day, our real unemployment–because you have ninety million people that aren’t working. Ninety-three million to be exact. If you start adding it up, our real unemployment rate is 42%. We have a lot of room. We have a lot of people who want to work.
Since there are around 38 million blacks in the US and he claims 93 million are out of work, this cannot be true unless every black man, woman, and child is out of work three times. BTW, the 93 Million figure came from a report on non-workers, not unemployed workers. Even using this bogus number comes to under 30% unemployment.
He should have mastered this level of math by 5th grade. If you look at the ~5% unemployment figure, this is a reasonable number. When the unemployment drops below 3% we'll be under severe inflationary pressure.
And independent analysis shows that the NOAA analysis is extremely accurate and even better than the competition.
It is not likely that the data would become tained. More likely the new administration would just stop collecting inconvenient data, or change the metric as described in the summary.
Have you ever been able to trust it? I doubt it, so nothing has really changed in this regard and the timing of this question seems partisan.
Oh, fucking please... Have you ever heard such juvenile falsehoods uttered by official Whitehouse representatives before? Unless you're Kellyanne Conway, you have to admit that this is different. The good news is, if they don't get this silly bullshit under control, they're going to drag the entire GOP down with them.