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?

Comments

Gov't data

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gov't data

[sims 2]

IIRC this is the same gov't that redefined broadband as 768Kbps so our broadband maps would look better back in the broadband recovery act days.

Re:Gov't data

[Oswald McWeany]

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?

Re:Gov't data

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gov't data

[Oswald McWeany]

He's right though. Most 9 year olds I know aren't working. They should be sent to work in the coal mines to help make America great again!

Damn lazy kids going to school and playing Mario Brothers instead of working the coal mines like they're supposed to.

Re:Gov't data

[Layzej]

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.

Re:Gov't data

[DarkOx]

Exactly what so many people seem to missing about all the hubub around presidency is the deep state is real, our bureaucracy for good and ill are quite resilient.

Just because you change out the man at the top and couple handfuls of his direct reports does not suddenly mean all the procedures, methods, systems, opinions, etc in use by all the 2,804,000+ federal workers and enumerable contractors both direct and corporate suddenly change too. That stuff is cultural and other than a few hot button issues that might get attention from POTUS directly takes decades to change, literally outlasting a single Presidents term of office in many cases.

In a lot a ways we are still feeling the effects of not exactly policy but popular opinion that dates to the Clinton Presidency and that of Gorge W Bush. People choose to get into civil service or not often depending on their admiration or lack their of for the top man in charge at the time they are ready to start a career. The people who started their careers in the late 90s and early 2000s are now the folks who have risen to positions where they are decision makers and mid-level bureaucrats. We have yet to see the real influence of Obama's millennial voters here yet (sadly IMHO, not looking forward to that all).

So the data is probably as trustworthy as it was 4 weeks or 4 years ago. Its probably as trustworthy as it was 8 years ago, or 16 or 20. That is to say its really not very trustworthy at all but probably less bias than you might imagine. There is a constant battle being fought between the left and right with the pendulum swinging both ways ever 8 years or so, but not as a far either way as the top men appear to swing. The real issue is that assumptions on either side are never really challenged or well examined because of the tug of war fought over the superficial stuff. So some labor statistic remains calculated they way it has been for the last 40 years when some probably well meaning person made a judgement call based on the information they had at hand. It never gets revisited in a serious scientific way because everyone is to busy doing studies and bickering over a handful of top line numbers that make for good headlines like the employment rate.

Re:Gov't data

[whoever57]

To Trump, facts are whatever he wants them to be.

He is a pathological liar and simply has no concept of truth that normal people would understand. I suspect that when he is lying, he isn't aware that what he is saying isn't true.

Re:Gov't data

[arth1]

There are also some other factors that skew the numbers, depending on how you count.

- Retirees have a full time job of being retired. Some statistics count them, some exclude them from the total, and some disregard them and the numbers go all wrong.
- Prison population, many of whom are modern slave labor (refuse to work = don't get parole). With the outrageously high prison population in the US, how this number is treated can make a significant difference.
- People who work multiple jobs. If you count the number of jobs, or count the number of workers, that leads to a discrepancy.
- The underemployed, who while having work, do not have enough income to subsist on. Seasonal workers can also fall under this. How should they be counted?
- Dark economy. Is it fair to count those who make a decent living outside the system as unemployed? This includes not only tax evaders and criminals at large, but also housewives and groups with an internal economy (mennonites, native tribes, communes).

While the exact numbers can be hard to determine, there's no doubt that the politicians have cooked the numbers many times by doing things like excluding those who have been unable to find work for a while, or excluding permanent residents and only counting citizens (as if the voting ability changes anything).

Re:Gov't data

[dywolf]

Either way, it sure makes the 5% look suspect.

not after you subtract retirees, student, and stay at home parents.
if you're not working and not seeking work, you aren't part of the labor market despite being "unemployed", and hence not counted.

Re:Gov't data

[meta-monkey]

That's not how pathological liars work. They absolutely know they're lying. But they assume everyone else is lying, too, and it's okay to lie to a liar. Gotta fool them before they fool you, right?

I don't think that describes Trump, though. What he mainly does is exaggerate, or a variation of Cunningham's Law. He says things that are imprecise, but in the direction of truth that otherwise the media would never report. Example, Trump wants people to know "employment numbers are bad." Obama/Hillary says 5%. Trump throws out any random high number (42%, whatever) and then everyone "proves" Trump wrong by saying "well yeah the 5% number is bullshit so maybe it's really like 15% or 20% when you start factoring in underemployed..." etc etc. Okay, great, Trump had a number wrong, but at least he recognizes the problem. Most importantly, the voters who are struggling to find work are now very aware that Trump is aware of their employment problems. They don't really give a shit about the exact number, because the only number they care about is the number of jobs they have. Obama and Hillary also both have wrong numbers, and are wrong about the existence of the problem. If Trump gave the 15% or 20% number himself everyone would just ignore it.

Same thing with Mexican rapists. If he just said "some illegal immigrants are criminals" he would be ignored. So he said Mexico is sending rapists, and then the media has to start arguing over just how many Mexicans are rapists. Fun(?) fact, 80% of central American women and girls are raped during their illegal border crossing. So, as Trump said, "well, somebody's doing the raping." Voters are then more concerned with stopping the rapes rather than nitpicking over the number of rapists.

We could never trust government

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:We could never trust government

[AmiMoJo]

In a properly functioning government, independent bodies are created to gather data for use by the public and politicians. Those bodies are overseen by bi-partisan groups with representatives from multiple parties, and their mandate is independence, transparency and impartiality.

It works in some democracies. The UK has the Office for Budget Responsibility, Japan has various agencies... Of course, politicians do their usual thing of cherry-picking and and misinterpreting the data, but the raw stuff is available and generally considered reliable.

It's also not the case that US governments have always been this bad either. I don't recall one telling the National Parks Service to stop publishing factual information because it contradicted their lies over something as trivial as the size of the inauguration crowd.

Re:We could never trust government

[AmiMoJo]

The two party system is a problem, but it's nothing compared to the danger of what Trump wants.

Trump is pushing for people to accept his "alternative facts" over the truth. It's a standard feature of post-truth politics. You pick the "facts" that you prefer. He wants voters to do that, to believe him rather than the press or government agencies that are publishing contradictory information.

Both Trump and his press secretary and various members of his staff have said this over and over. The press is dishonest, anyone who contradicts him is a liar. It's extremely dangerous to disregard the truth and stop caring about it.

Re:We could never trust government

[whoever57]

Is that another Trump fact?

McCarthy was not "completely and totally vindicated" by anything. The existence of a small number of Soviet spies did not justify the witchhunt that he pursued for political reasons. It did not justify all the false allegations and innuendo, it did not justify ruining of the careers of many innocent people.

Depends on the Department

[IMightB]

I think it depends on the dept that your talking about. I wouldn't trust anything coming from Trumps office for shit... Places like NOAA, NASA, etc etc. I would probably trust more. It all depends how how horrible it gets under Trump.

Why restrict this to US citizens?

[OzPeter]

Trusting government data is an age old problem, and even though I might Godwin myself over this, Goebbel said things like:

A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth

and

The truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

That Trump is trying to channel Goebbels* is not surprising given who Trump is and his past utterances. (But I don't know which Emperor he was trying to channel when he proclaimed the "National Day of Patriotic Devotion" which coincided with his inauguration - seriously .. it's a real thing)

* The headline of TFA is "In the Trump administration era of ‘alternative facts,’ what happens to government data?", something that TFS should have taken into account.

Alternative Facts

[dcw3]

Before you go getting your panties all in a wad, the Bureau of Labor Standards (BLS) reports quite a few numbers on unemployment statistics. Unfortunately, too many people harp about the basic unemployment rate w/o taking the time to go look at the other numbers available...underemployment for example. The "redefinition" of unemployment removed people who weren't looking for work from the basic number. But, let's take a look at https://www.bls.gov/news.relea... and see what's actually being produced, and compare apples to apples instead of whining that someone changed (or refined depending upon what spin you'd like to put on it) the calculation.

Re:You just now started worrying?

[cusco]

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.

Before you think about this, answer me that:

[Opportunist]

What changed during the Bush administration?
What changed during the Obama administration?

Why the fuck do you expect change now?

I don't get it. I really don't. NOTHING changed from one administration change to the next for the past decades. Oh yes, there was a war on terror. Oh. And? That would have been in what way different under any other rule?

Face it, folks: You're fucked. You have a system in place that allows you to choose every 4 years whether you want to feed one group of useless gits or the other group of useless gits. That makes a huge difference for the gits, and that's why that election fight is fought tooth and nail because it's all or nothing for them. Fo you, it's nothing. Either way.

Mostly because you don't get to choose who you can vote for. That's chosen for you. In the end, when you strip the whole fluff, the whole spectacle has a lot of the old Soviet times when you even sometimes got to choose between two candidates from the same party, supporting the same ideals and the same economic system, not questioning in the slightest the all-holy doctrines and differing in insignificant bullshit topics that were hyped and emotionalized to insane levels despite having exactly zero impact on anything that really mattered in the end.

Let's be brutally honest: The same is true for your DemRep Party.

Re:You just now started worrying?

[XxtraLarGe]

On the bright side, it is refreshing to see the Democrats suddenly care about fiscal responsibility, and the press actually scrutinizing the government.

Re:You just now started worrying?

[fastest fascist]

All your complaints seem to be policy points, not facts of any kind ,and certainly not government data.

Re:You just now started worrying?

[squiggleslash]

The list goes on...

...of stuff nobody has ever said?

'Islamic terrorism' not being a real thing - I'm guessing this is a perversion of the Bush and Obama administration's refusal to call IS* or Al Qaeda terrorism "Radical Islamic Terror". But neither regime has said "'Islamic terrorism' not being a real thing", they've said that it's unhelpful and likely to help the terrorists' own campaign if you link the words "Islamic" and "Terrorism" because you're implying that IS*/AQ's linking of the two is legitimate, and because many, including Muslims, will take the phrasing as implying we're at war with Islam rather than at war with terrorists.

or like that we can pull out of Iraq and be free of our involvement there - Nobody has ever claimed this, ever.

or like that we can let Russia come in and take control and that won't have a bad impact on the US or our allies - Where? Syria? Because that's not what I've heard at all. Most politicians on both sides of the fence are deeply troubled by Russia's involvement in Syria. Hence the support for a no-fly zone.

or how if we just build schools, hospitals and give them jobs, everybody who would have become a terrorist will instead live a happy productive life without perpetrating any violence, - nobody has ever made that argument in the history of the universe.

or how we should release the bad people from Gitmo because they aren't really bad people they're just misunderstood - nobody has ever made that argument in the history of the universe. The complaint about Gitmo is two fold: one, there are a lot of innocent people there, and two: it's unconstitutional and illegal to hold people without due process (see (1) for the reason why.) Obama was making plans to move prisoners at Gitmo to the US in the early days of his administration, to US prisons, to be processed by constitutional authorities. After Congress effectively made that option impossible, he did the exact opposite of what you claim: he kept Gitmo open, rather than releasing people being held illegally there.

or going back to the Clinton administration how we don't have a problem with terrorists that requires a military solution, we have a problem that requires a criminal justice solution? - congrats, you found something that's correct, but alas, still not something the Obama administration has ever claimed. Terrorism is indeed best treated as a criminal, rather than military, problem. Turning Terrorists from murderous scum into heroic soldiers is the worst thing the Bush administration ever did, and is probably why we've seen an uptick in terror in general, not just in the creation of IS*, but also in groups not associated with Arabs or Radicalized Religious fanatics such as white supremacists.

The list goes on, but you get the idea. All of those 'alternative facts' from Democrat administrations have resulted in the direct and indirect violent deaths of many Americans and other westerners. The Republicans have their fair share, but you can't lay the blame for the problem solely one party.

None of those "Alternative facts" exists. The nearest you got to, that a twenty year old Democratic government might have had a different view of terrorists to the heroic soldiers view you subscribe to, saved lives - it was a conventional law enforcement operation that prevented the NYE attack on LAX from being better known than 9/11. And it was Bush's refusal to take seriously those policies that lead to 9/11.

And, even if any of those alternative facts did "exist", ie Democrats were actually saying them, none of them would ever cause lives to be lost.

Re:The questioner reveals their own dishonesty

[cusco]

They stopped counting the long-term unemployed under St. Ronnie, under Shrub they redefined 'long-term'. I believe it was under Bush the Elected (but maybe under Clinton) that they stopped counting people who didn't have phones.

Removing food, fuel, housing and healthcare from the official yardstick for inflation happened during the '80s, that was how Reagan "beat inflation". In the '90s they added electronics and communications to make the numbers look better (not sure if they're still in there).

Benghazi? Seriously? I thought even InfoWars had given up beating that poor dead horse.

The IRS didn't target conservative groups, they were instructed by Congress to enforce the laws on the books about registering non-profit organizations (IIRC environmental groups were the actual target of Congress). That conservative groups were found to be breaking the law wasn't a surprise to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. They chose a category which disallowed political action so that they could hide their donor lists, and started politicking before they even finished the paperwork. The non-Libertardian groups caught said, "Oops, we chose the wrong category and will fix it."

Before you go off on your tangent of calling me an Obama-loving Democratic shill I should probably make clear that I loathe what the Democratic Party has become and seriously dislike Barry "Bush-lite" Obama. Just your post was so full of bullshit that it irritated me.

Re:You just now started worrying?

[mrchaotica]

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.

No kidding. The really sad thing is that libertarian candidates could be that viable alternative, if they would just understand that the tragedy of the commons is a real thing and that government is a legitimate means of solving it, and tone down the economic extremism. Progressives and libertarians substantially agree on social policy (except for affirmative action), after all!