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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: 0.485s | 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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irrational ◴[01 Feb 25 23:04 UTC] No.42903435[source]▶
Fact checking is things like Republicans claiming that people in a certain town are eating cats and dogs or their are pedophiles in the basement of a certain pizza place. There isn't any need to model and scrutinize data to fact check the majority of nonsense Republicans spout.
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1. defrost ◴[02 Feb 25 00:29 UTC] No.42904131[source]▶
It's a big claim that "immigrants are eating the cats and dogs in specific town in Ohio" (note the plural).

What was readily checked is the source of such a claim (where did Trump get that from?) and what evidence was provided?

The trace back on that stupidity was unsubstantiated rumours triggered from a walked back local area posting and a slew of images that didn't come from the place in question, etc.

2. cheema33 ◴[02 Feb 25 00:41 UTC] No.42904240[source]▶
Generally speaking, the responsibility of proof falls on party making the claim.

If I claim that you beat your wife, you are not expected to prove your innocence by showing that you don't do it. Proving a negative is difficult if not impossible in some cases. I have to show evidence to back up my claim.