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This is just intellectual cowardice. Ignoring for a second that this particular controversy is a total nothingburger (see my reply to @gattsuru), statistics which are in some sense 'constructed' are the only way of understanding any large scale and complex societal phenomena, whether it be crime, inflation or whatever else, and the solution if you don't trust the people constructing them is to investigate the particular processes by which any particular one is constructed to see what flaws there are/might be, whether they be minor or totally disqualifying. Otherwise, there is simply no point discussing anything.
Congratulations, this is an observation every undergraduate social scientist and humanities students has about 6 weeks into their studies - in the same sense this is true, history books also have no 'basis to reality' - they are necessarily vast abstractions and simplifications of an infinite amount of possible evidence. Like E.H. Carr says, evidence is like fish in the sea, not in fish on the fishmonger's block, and we are all groping around in the dark in the face of impossibly vast and complex problems of social measurement. However, we don't on that basis dismiss history as a worthless enterprise with no truth value, and nor should it be with statistics. If you find the FBI or the Treasury's statistical work inadequate or too easily manipulable, please don't ever read quantitative history, you might have a heart attack.
I'm not suggesting that all statistics everywhere are bad. I'm saying that these statistics, collected by these people, in present America, are bad, and unreliable, as evidenced by the observation that anyone relying on them just a few weeks ago would have completely different conclusions as to etc. etc.
You want to have some sort of tough guy online moment where you call me a coward for not wasting my time parsing through obvious statistical bullshit of the highest order. Silly goose
Not true at all. The statistics have barely changed and one's conclusions should be exactly the same - a very small decrease moving to a very small increase is not important.
I'm just asking you to explain why it's bullshit, not just refuse to engage with any specifics.
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Rather, most people refuse to because they are cowards about demarcation and it's useful to be tactically hypocritical.
Social sciences are not without any merit but I find the idea that we should submit any authority to something this made up laughable.
When people tell you to do something against your interest and all they can muster as justification is this level of rigor, you just tell them to stop trying to con you.
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