Corona Daily 470: In Numbers We Trust

At the time of writing this piece, the Johns Hopkins University Dashboard gives a global figure of 2,822,003 infected and 197,578 dead. Worldometer numbers are 2,846,575/197,859. Were these organizations appointed by the WHO or a similar world body? How are they getting their data from across the world? Should we blindly trust the numbers?

*****

In academic papers, you often refer to work by other authors (citation). A research scholar’s responsibility is not limited to giving the source, but also judging its credibility. The best scientific journals will not publish your paper unless it is peer-reviewed. Such scrutiny is essential for validating any paper.

This is about building a chain of trust. You can quote a fact from a reliable source, not otherwise. In private life, we have friends whose objectivity and rationality we trust. We don’t hesitate to believe them, or to pass on the information they give us. We also have friends whose word we would like to verify or simply ignore. It depends on the reputation each of them has built over their lifetime.  Conspiracy theorists are capable of seeing conspiracies everywhere.

If A trusts B, B trusts C and C trusts D, then information can pass through this chain reliably. The strength of the trust community is the strength of its least trustworthy source.

*****

In a pandemic situation, government sources are critical. Systems allow them to collect as well as aggregate the data. If death certificates are the proof of the pudding, hospitals or crematoriums are usually obliged to give the data to a government health body.

The trustworthiness of media is a matter of experience and choice of the researcher. The rightist Economist and the leftist Guardian stand at opposite sides of the spectrum. Their opinions and agendas may be different, but both can be equally trustworthy. They have a long history, strong editorial boards, wide global network of journalists and a reputation for objective reporting. Most writers of The Economist remain anonymous (no byline) and the charter prevents any shareholder from acquiring majority shares. Such measures build the credibility of the source.

I read, (not watch), BBC and CNN. Based on my experience, I will not hesitate to refer to BBC. But I will cross-check with several sources before quoting CNN.

*****

The Johns Hopkins dashboard is getting more than a billion hits a day. Before trusting the numbers issued there, or on the Worldometer site, shouldn’t you audit their process, the methodology, and the sources? By scrutinizing deeper and deeper? To be honest, few people have time to waste on this even during lockdown. In that case, you can outsource the audit to a researcher. Tomorrow, I will talk about the Johns Hopkins dashboard.

Ravi