I've just written a review of Desrosieres' history of statistical reasoning
that should be in the next issue of Radical Statistics.

One thing, not in the review, is Desrosieres' quoting of Dickens's Mr
Gradgrind 'an implacable figure who brought death to innocent people while
calling for' 'the Facts, Sir, nothing but the Facts'.  Desrosieres implies
that Dickens was satirizing the statisticians of the 19th century.   

Desrosieres goes on to give a fine summary of the problem created for the
statistician.  '(The statistician) was confined to a narrow role ... He
could not enter the field of political decision making without immediately
forfeiting his credo of fact without opinion.  Nor could he play an active
part in the social sciences .. for he would then have to combine his facts
with more general explanatory and interpretive systems which he could not
account for simply by reason of the duly noted fact.'

I think the statistics profession in its dealing with official statistics is
still suffering heavily from this concentration on facts.   

No one can say that the recent discussion on this list has suffered from
lack of opinions!   Perhaps the expressions of opinion reflect the
frustrations some statisticians feel in the confined role that the
profession has created for itself?  

But opinions about statistics are only of interest on this list if, as
Desrosieres puts it 'they are combined with more general explanatory and
interpretive systems'.    

It isn't relevant to the purpose of this list to have opinions that are not
related to evidence.  Subscribers lose interest and withdraw from the list.
There have been several resignations yesterday and today.

Ray Thomas 
List owner (list owners get notified of people joining and leaving).
Currently we have 250 members.


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