I've been hearing a lot about "fake news", "rigged" everything, and "experts" spewing seemly endless stats in an attempt to justify their perspective. I can't recall how many times I've seen someone write "the truth is" or "the reality of the situation is" followed by an opinion that seems relatively simple to dispute. It makes me question their motives, the data, and makes their arguments much weaker. Did they pull and analyze the data on their own? Where did the data come from? Who owns the data? These are important questions that need to be considered when being presented with"facts".
As someone with a strong background in data, data governance and information delivery, I love to let data tell the story that needs to be told, regardless of the outcome. The goal should not be to disappoint or impress anyone. Adding too many assumptions gets you in trouble by allowing your personal biases influence the outcome. To stay truely objective, integrity needs to be paramount.
Many people that are presenting facts to justify their position are probably getting the data from someone else who got it from someone else who had an analyst pull some info that might support the story they are running with. To many times, the story influences the need for data to support it...when it should be the other way around. So, you get a segment of the data that agrees with the narrative but could be missing an important segment that could shift the narrative or make it irrelevant. Individual, group, or corporate bias interferes with integrity and the public is left with partial data, analysis and conclusions being presented as fact. Important questions we should be asking are: Which "experts" start with data to drive the objective reporting on a topic? Which start with a narrative and find data that's supports their story?
We all should be considering the source of the data and who ultimately owns it. When we see "CNN Poll" or "FOX News survey" or even election results, there needs to be a critical eye for understanding where the data originates and who might have control over it throughout its life. It's easy to spot the potential bias with news organizations. CNN and others lean left and FOX News leans right. The results of their polls or surveys should reflect their viewership. The less obvious and more difficult scenarios to evaluate are ensuring unbiased data within events, like elections. While I'm not suggesting that elections are "rigged", the public has little knowledge about what happens after they submit their ballot. With the introduction of electronic polling, the data lineage becomes even more obscure. Are the companies that make the electronic systems reputable? Does the billionaire international owner of the company, its developers and analysts have the ethics and integrity to collect and maintain data of the highest quality possible? If there is any hint that there could be some bias built into the data systems, the company and data should not be utilized. However, it's never that simple.
In many cases, we have to trust the data governance and integrity in the people, systems and organizations that provide data. That said, we owe it to ourselves to be critical of the data sourses and context in order to form our own understanding of a topic. Do your own fact finding. Don't rely on people to form opinions for you. Learn to dig for data and perform your own analysis to come to your own conclusions. You will start to find that you can more consistently trust some people/organizations over others. The next time you see data being presented, try to use an open mind in evaluating the potential for bias in the data and conclusion to their narrative. By putting in some extra effort, you will end up with a better sense for how close other people's "facts" are from your understanding of the "truth".