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?
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.
To a degree, yes. Obviously a healthy amount of skepticism is needed and you need to be aware that governments can and will lie if there is a pressing need.
Individual politicians? No, don't believe a word they say without fact checking. Government agencies you tend to believe because they are large bodies with multiple employees paid to analyze data. In the era of Trump though I think I will be more suspicious of even government agencies than usual. We've already seen a press release filled with bare-faced "Alternate Facts". We've already seen the National Park service censored for publishing inconvenient data.
I think it's going to be more and more important to get news on domestic issues from overseas sources such as the BBC. Not only is our own media already polarized to the left or the right instead of just reporting facts, Trump threatened several times during his campaign to treat it as illegal for the press to criticize him. At what point will he try to enforce that?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The most important thing about gov't data is that they describe accurately where they get the data, what each of their terms mean, and that those not change from year to year or administration to administration.
As long as the methodology is consistent then it's useful for longitudinal comparison, regardless of whether you agree with the absolute numerical value.