Abstract
In this chapter, we open a large box with questions and reflections about the scientific background of official statistics. First, it will be about knowledge: how can we know that we know what we know (or do not know)? Then we will shed light on the social position, role and function of statistics (in the sense of science, information and institution). Some episodes from the history of official statistics are used for clarification. Finally, two concrete and current applications will conclude the chapter: Indicators and Sustainable Development. But first, a methodology is presented that provides a holistic roadmap through this extremely broad topic, the ‘System of Profound Knowledge’ by W. E. Deming.
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Notes
- 1.
See Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge in https://blog.deming.org/2012/10/demings-system-of-profound-knowledge/.
- 2.
‘Systems thinking is the fusion of analysis and synthesis, depending on whether our objective is knowledge or understanding’ (Ackoff 1994).
- 3.
- 4.
See the introduction of (Saetnan et al. 2012) on the Routledge website https://www.routledge.com/The-Mutual-Construction-of-Statistics-and-Society/Saetnan-Lomell-Hammer/p/book/9780415873703.
- 5.
The great interest in this topic is, for example, clarified in the conference ‘Truth in Numbers: The role of data in a world of fact, fiction and everything in between’, 4 April 2018, Bern, Switzerland (http://www.paris21.org/news-center/events/conference-truth-numbers-role-data-world-fact-fiction-and-everything-between) or by Hans Rosling’s book ‘Factfulness’ (Rosling et al. 2018) and corresponding reactions (e.g. Population Matters 2018).
- 6.
See, for example, Michiko Kakutani in The Guardian, ‘The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump’ (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/14/the-death-of-truth-how-we-gave-up-on-facts-and-ended-up-with-trump) (Kakutani 2018).
- 7.
William Davies has emphasised this major risk for the future of statistics (Davies 2017).
- 8.
In his elaboration on “Science beyond truth and enlightenment?” Ulrich Beck asks for a “reflexive, complete scientization, which also extends scientific scepticism to the inherent foundations and consequences of science itself” (Beck 1998, p. 155).
- 9.
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register (Luke 2 NIV, 2).
- 10.
The Federal Constitutional Court announced its judgment in this case on 19 September 2018 (https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2018/bvg18-074.html).
- 11.
See in particular the considerations and guidelines concerning the Zensus 2011 court case (Bundesverfassungsgericht 2018).
- 12.
- 13.
The famous Goodhart’s law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) was proven in a dramatic reality check in Greece, after European macro-financial indicators were directly related to the Euro currency, the Stability and Growth Pact and even the Treaties themselves.
- 14.
See also ‘A Greek Tragedy: Hubris, Ate, and Nemesis’ (Coyle 2015: 77).
- 15.
Significantly, this allegation was made by a so-called Truth Committee (TruthCommittee 2015: 18).
- 16.
See for example the letters of AMStat (http://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/POL-20170901GeorgiouSeptember.pdf), FENStatS (http://fenstats.eu/data/news/Letter_FENStatS.pdf) or ISI (https://isi-web.org/index.php/activities/professional-ethics/isi-statements-letters).
- 17.
In the attitude of ‘realism’, different ways of plausibility checks (i.e. ways of verifying and articulating the substance of that reality and its independence from observation) exist in different statistical communities, such as survey statisticians or accountants (Desrosières 2001).
- 18.
‘More than one solution is possible because more than one measurement regime is possible, and this means that there is a range of potentially valid measures’ (Porter 1995, p. 33).
- 19.
‘For such a model there is no need to ask the question ‘Is the model true?’ If ‘truth’ is to be the ‘whole truth’ the answer must be ‘No’. The only question of interest is ‘Is the model illuminating and useful?’ (Box 1976, p. 792).
- 20.
Whereas the term ‘data’ is logically placed on the input side of the statistical process; unfortunately, ‘data’ is nowadays often used as a buzzword for the entire area of data, information and knowledge.
- 21.
‘There is no such entity as GDP out there waiting to be measured by economists. It is an artificial construct … an abstraction that adds everything from nails to toothbrushes, tractors, shoes, haircuts, management consultancy, street cleaning, yoga teaching, plates, bandages, books and all the millions of other services and products’ (Coyle 2015, p. 26).
- 22.
See the title of the Data Manifesto of the RSS ‘What steam was to the nineteenth century, and oil has been to the 20th, data is to 21st’ (Royal Statistical Society 2014).
- 23.
It is important to keep in mind that adequate models nevertheless include (unavoidably) simplifications, since “there is no accurate (or, rather, perfect) representation of the system that is simpler than the system itself” (Cilliers 2000, p. 9).
- 24.
The chapter ‘Objective and subjective dimensions of well-being are both important’ and its recommendations deal with quality-of-life measures (Stiglitz et al. 2009, pp. 15–16).
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
See http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics and (United Nations 2014c).
- 29.
The journal Emergence dedicated a special issue to ‘Complexity and Knowledge Management’ (Merali and Snowdon 2000).
- 30.
See van den Hove ‘A rationale for science–policy interfaces’ (Van den Hove 2007).
- 31.
See “Science for the post-normal age” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993).
- 32.
See also “Technology Run Amok - Crisis Management in the Digital Age” (Mitroff 2019).
- 33.
“Zukunft braucht Herkunft” (the future needs the past) (Marquard 2003). “Das Neue, das wir suchen, braucht das Alte, sonst können wir das Neue auch gar nicht als solches erkennen. Ohne das Alte können wir das Neue nicht ertragen, heute schon gar nicht, weil wir in einer wandlungsbeschleunigten Welt leben” Interview with Odo Marquard in Der Spiegel 9/2003 (http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-26448590.html).
- 34.
An introduction to S&TS can be found in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_technology_and_society; overviews provide (Restivo 2005) or http://stswiki.org/index.php?title=Worldwide_directory_of_STS_programs or for example the UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts.
- 35.
This is also emphasised by Sheila Jasanoff: “However, co-production, in the view of contributors to this volume, should not be advanced as a fully fledged theory, claiming lawlike consistency and predictive power. It is far more an idiom – a way of interpreting and accounting for complex phenomena so as to avoid the strategic deletions and omissions of most other approaches in the social sciences” (Jasanoff 2004b, p. 3).
- 36.
See Sheila Jasanoff’s introduction on her website https://sheilajasanoff.org/research/co-production/.
- 37.
One of the pioneers of this field, Susan Leigh Star, has demonstrated this in ‘Sorting Things Out’ using a variety of examples (Bowker and Star 2000).
- 38.
Quote in (Saetnan et al. 2012, p. 9).
- 39.
A historical understanding of macro-economic statistics is provided in Daniel Mügge’s “The Revenge of the Political Arithmetick. Economic Statistics and Political Purpose” (Mügge 2019).
- 40.
“The Annali universali di statistica signaled this new phase by starting to publish in 1852 a column called Cronica statistica Italiana” (Patriarca 1996, p. 148).
- 41.
“Nor did Italian practitioners abandon the idea that statistics was essentially a governmental science and had eminently civil function” (Patriarca 1996, p. 186).
- 42.
- 43.
See the research project ‘Arithmus: peopling Europe: how data make a people’ (Goldsmiths 2018).
- 44.
Robert A. Wilson in Eugenics Archives (Cassata 2017).
- 45.
- 46.
See also (Wietog 2003).
- 47.
For an introduction and critical review, see https://blog.deming.org/2015/08/myth-if-you-cant-measure-it-you-cant-manage-it/.
- 48.
One of the currently leading quality management approaches Six Sigma defines the concept as follows: ‘Six Sigma is a systematic approach to process improvement using analytical and statistical methods. The special feature of Six Sigma compared to other process improvement methods is the mathematical approach. It is assumed that every business process can be described as a mathematical function’ http://www.six-sigma.de/en/six-sigma-definition.
- 49.
- 50.
- 51.
Foucault (1978).
- 52.
For a critical review see (Lægreid and Christensen 2007).
- 53.
- 54.
“Statistics is not only, as a branch of mathematics, a tool of proof, but is also a tool of governance, ordering and coordinating many social activities and serving as a guide for public action. As a general rule, the two aspects are handled by people of different specializations, whose backgrounds and interests are far apart. Thus, mathematicians develop formalisms based on probability theory and on inferential statistics, while the political scientist and sociologist are interested in the applications of statistics for public action, and there are some who speak of ‘Governing by indicators’. The two areas of interest are rarely dealt with jointly” (Desrosières 2011, p. 41).
- 55.
Michael Power sees even “audit as intrinsic to modern society – ‘a constitutive principle of social organizations’ and an ‘institutional norm’” (Power 1994).
- 56.
See, for example, “The Club of Rome to William Nordhaus and the Nobel Committee: ‘Pursue Profitability – Even at the Cost of the Planet?!’” (Dixson-Declève et al. 2018).
- 57.
Overpowered metrics eat underspecified goals (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/09/29/soft-bias-of-underspecified-goals/).
- 58.
Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law.
- 59.
Yankelovich, D., in Corporate Priorities: A Continuing Study of the New Demands on Business, cited in http://pdf.wri.org/bell/tn_1-56973-179-9_teaching_note_english.pdf.
- 60.
An example is the Journal Impact Factor and its “enormous effects on the scientific ecosystem: transforming the publishing industry, shaping hiring practices and the allocation of resources, and, as a result, reorienting the research activities and dissemination practices of scholars” (Larivière and Sugimoto 2018, forthcoming, p. 2).
- 61.
- 62.
“Wenn Technokraten über politische Fragen entscheiden sowie politische Beschlüsse fassen und die Sparpolitik sowieso schon gefährdete Gruppen hart trifft, schafft das Nährboden für die Abweisung und Politisierung von Expertenwissen auf breiter Front” (Hendricks and Vestergaard 2018, p. 128).
- 63.
Ulrich Beck has emphasised that the struggle among rationality claims follows from a division of the world between experts (in rationality) and non-experts (deviating from rationality) in the non-reflexive modernity (Beck 1998, p. 57).
- 64.
For a critical analysis see for example O’Neill Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (O’Neil 2016).
- 65.
This is the title of the following book (Cavanillas et al. 2018).
- 66.
See, for example, the large selection of ‘EU Policy Indicators’ provided by Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/).
- 67.
See the Handbook on Social Indicators (United Nations 1989).
- 68.
See Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators – Methodology and User Guide (OECD and EuropeanCommission_JRC 2008).
- 69.
- 70.
- 71.
In this sense, indicators are of high relevance for human rights and (global) governance (Merry 2011).
- 72.
Even if this might change, following the analysis of Cook (2017).
- 73.
For an overview over the statistical methods and approaches, see Maggino’s Complexity in Society: From Indicators to their Synthesis (Maggino 2017).
- 74.
See, for example, the following selection: Power (1994), Desrosières (2010), Sangolt (2010a, b), Desrosières (2011), Hammer (2011), Saetnan et al. (2011), Davis et al. (2012a, b), Coyle (2014), Sébastien et al. (2014), Porter (2015), König (2015), Rottenburg et al. (2015), Supiot (2015a, b), Davies (2016), Diaz-Bone and Didier (2016), Cherrier (2017), Cook (2017), Eyraud (2018), König (2018a, b), Ravetz (2018), Ravetz et al. (2018).
- 75.
- 76.
See the example of Greek statistics in Sect. 3.2.1.1.
- 77.
See Eurostat’s policies here (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/about/policies/dissemination).
- 78.
- 79.
- 80.
- 81.
See, for example, the calculation of Total Material Requirement https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/signals-2000/page017.htmlt.
- 82.
See, for example, the archive of European data from CORINE Land Cover https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover or of LUCAS https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/projects/lucas and https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/LUCAS_-_Land_use_and_land_cover_survey.
- 83.
In Europe, corresponding activities are coordinated within ‘the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES)’ https://biodiversity.europa.eu/maes, supported by the knowledge innovation project on an ‘Integrated System of Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services Accounting in the EU (INCA)’ http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC110321. At UN level, experimental ecosystem accounting has made progress as well (https://seea.un.org/events/forum-experts-seea-experimental-ecosystem-accounting).
- 84.
The Report of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (HLEG) was released during the 6th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy on 27–29 November 2018 in Incheon, Korea; this aspect is covered in the report https://www.oecd.org/statistics/measuring-economic-social-progress/ (Stiglitz et al. 2018b).
- 85.
- 86.
- 87.
- 88.
42 is the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’ in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Adams 1981).
- 89.
“Measuring progress may be one important way to renew democracies in decline. In communities around the world, engaging citizens in helping to define and measure progress – a meaningful task which necessarily involves developing a shared vision, identifying concrete outcomes and discussing differences – has proved an important means of rebuilding democratic capacity at a time when many countries show evidence of a general decline in democratic confidence and vitality, as well as alienation and disaffection among their citizens” (Hall and Rickard 2013, p. 26).
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Radermacher, W.J. (2020). Science and Society: A Reflexive Approach to Official Statistics. In: Official Statistics 4.0. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31492-7_3
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