ISI on US official statistics
The International Statistical Institute is a professional organisation of statisticians. Its membership includes quite a lot of expertise on the production and use of official statistics, and it has a habit of commenting on political interference with official statistics.
The ISI has a statement on US official statistics
The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is concerned about government interference in the compilation and availability of Federal Statistics in the United States of America (USA). A proposed change in measuring and reporting U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) serves as an important and timely example.
The statement goes on to explain that the USA has proposed removing government expenditures from GDP, and that this is both intrinsically a bad idea and also a weakening of international agreements on which official statistics to measure and how to define them.
[Disclaimer: I’m a member of the ISI, but I wasn’t involved in any way in producing this statement]
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »