Go beyond the truth

Without lies... a statistician's point of view

4th april 2018, Bern (Switzerland)

"Truth in numbers. The role of data in a world of fact, fiction, and everything between"

Already the title of the conference suggested a change or, minimal, a discussion about it. This conference, organized by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) and the international organization Paris21, brought together many statisticians from different countries.

What is the role of public statistics today?

The question comes immediately and, we know, it's more and more urgent. As it, in parallel, becomes clearer that public statistics can not (and will not succeed) to keep up with the new information gurus: facebook, twitter, google ... that not only inform but are owners of Big Data. Big data that are at the base of the so-called Data revolution, and together they have upset the collective imagination. The shock of the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal has begun to show the deception: social media isn't all rainbows and unicorns. In a nutshell, the Data Revolution has transformed us from consumers to products (as proof ... are you still sure you are registered for free on facebook?). Okay the world is in transformation, but the question remains.

What will be the role of statistics from now on?

Provide even more secure data? More reliable? Best data? Or, statistical agencies need to be even more neutral or more independent? Two days ago (4 April 2018) it was as though, among statisticians, we looked each other in the eyes, the answer was clear to everyone: but these things that they ask us... we already do it. Paradox. Our question: why can not we get rid of these expections? How far is the distance between the ivory tower of statistics and the real world?

Let's go back to the initial question: what will be the role of statistics?

History teaches us that revolutions also serve to look back, and so it is useful to re-read, for example, Ian Hacking, who in the mid-eighties wrote about it:

The quiet statisticians have changed our world - not by discovering new facts or technical developments but by changing the ways we reason, experiment, and form our opinions about it.

With these words, Hacking does not refer to statistic-builders-of-truth, those who by mixing appropriately big data, algorithms at will of strong powers (multinationals, associations, political parties, ...) produce information, and they guarantee a certain level of attention . Attention that today is even more salable (and generates more profits than simple information, for its part ever more abundant and homogeneous).

The American philosopher with "quiet statisticians" intends to propose another view of statisticians. Perhaps in a slightly disenchanted way, however, it proposes a view of the statistic less interested in the search for the truest truth, or the ground truth. He proposes statisticians as a reference model on how they try to understand facts, through changing paths, experimenting and, at the end, looking for the comparison of opinion.

Unfortunately, for now, the story has been the opposite of what Hacking wanted. Trump and his lies artifacts are a shining international example, but very similar are all pseudoscientific "analyzes" that tell what the strong powers want to hear and are immediately disseminated by the media as absolute truth, without any verification (similar cases also occur in Switzerland, too... and not just overseas).

The new role of public statistics

Thus, the new basis of public statistics will be to worry less about the truth. Considering that the struggle is currently unequal (due to the means at its disposal, for the interests at stake, not only economic but also political, ...) statistics could take an unexpected step and could begin to show transparently what lies behind the truths, how everyone can filter, sort datas or how select data between differents statistical sources. And highlight how these works are useful to be able to build their own personal opinion. To be able to go beyond the truth, not to fight a senseless battle and to live better the new economic era, baptized: the economy of attention.

The attention economy will follow and will monetize the previous information's economy, but what will happen if consumers-products will be made more careful?

The challenge for statistics will then be able to awaken citizens from indifference, remind them to ask questions. For example: what does it mean 1% of the population? What does it mean that unemployment has fallen by 0.1 percentage points? Is it a lot, or is it little? Those people found a job? Is this new job better or worse than the previous one? Or those people who were unemployed have become inactive and do not look for a job anymore?

Then public statistics will really have a new role. And perhaps, really, there will be no great inventions to be made, it will be about not being afraid to open up or even going down and meeting those people we count but who know less and less.

#Data4Truth

PS: If the dive in 1984 is not enough you can dive until the beginning of the eighteenth century when Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, used these words to talk about the truth:

“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”

* The quotations proposed in this article I have taken from the speeches of some speakers of the day.