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CDC data are disappearing

(www.theatlantic.com)
749 points doener | 2 comments | 01 Feb 25 11:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.022s | source
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breadwinner ◴[01 Feb 25 20:59 UTC] No.42902252[source]▶
Data is the ultimate Fact Check. This is a President that's adamantly opposed to fact checking [1] and has even coerced Facebook to drop fact checking. Of course they don't want data on government sites that disprove their "alternate facts".

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4920827-60-minutes-tru...

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cle ◴[01 Feb 25 22:15 UTC] No.42902978[source]▶
> Data is the ultimate Fact Check.

This is wrong IMO. Data can be missing, incomplete, biased, skewed, and even just plain wrong. Cherry-picked data can be worse than no data.

The ultimate fact check is a scientific process of collecting data, modeling it, scrutinizing it and its methodology and the entities involved, contextualizing it, cross-checking, replicating, etc.

What media likes to call "fact checking" to me feels more motivated by punchy headlines and chyrons.

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breadwinner ◴[01 Feb 25 22:18 UTC] No.42903019[source]▶
> Data can be missing, incomplete, biased, skewed, and even just plain wrong.

All true of course. The solution for that is more data, not less.

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1. cle ◴[01 Feb 25 22:22 UTC] No.42903042[source]▶
Maybe. It needs to be the right data, and interpreted correctly. More of the wrong data isn't particularly helpful.

I think what I'm arguing is that just having data isn't good enough, and it's dangerous to accept data at face value. It needs to be the right data, and interpreted correctly.

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2. ◴[02 Feb 25 01:21 UTC] No.42904580[source]▶