I support the idea of establishing a Statistics Commission - that is the
principal component of the White Paper. But I think that the title and main
theme of the White Paper 'Building Trust in Statistics' is completely
wrong-headed.
Building trust is something that belongs to public relations professionals,
not to statisticians. Statisticians are not very good at building trust
and there is no good reason for them to give time to this particular
activity. The job of government statisticians should be to tell us what
they know about the trustworthiness of their statistics, not to boost their
trustworthiness.
This is not just a matter of semantics. The running sore of statistics of
registered unemployment provides an example that illustrates the importance
of this point. The 'fiddling of the unemployment statistics' in the
1980s was the main reason for the inclusion of the idea of an independent
statistical service in the Labour Party Election manifesto and for the
production of the Green Paper that preceded the White Paper.
But the White Paper has nothing of significance to say about the Count of
Claimant statistics or about other administrative statistics!
The Count of Claimants is as trustworthy as any government statistics in
giving accurate and reliable statistics on the numbers receiving Job Seekers
Allowance. So should the Government and the ONS try to build trust in the
Claimant Series? Or should it really say that the sample-based LFS
unemployment series is more trustworthy???
Of course these question are not rhetorical. They do have answers. But
the point is that the White Paper fails completely to deal with questions of
these kinds.
Ray Thomas, Social Sciences, Open University
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 01908-679081 Fax: 01908-550401
Post: 35 Passmore, Milton Keynes MK6 3DY
PS Some of the answers are included in the draft of an article on the White
paper that can be read at
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/radstats/files/WhitePaper.html>. I have
not been overwhelmed with comments on this draft, and comments are still
very welcome!!
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