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Comment by fixxer | Hacker News Reader

I've been following Madeline Sumption on Twitter for a while. I think she has a political motivation and I don't consider the Migration Observatory to be a valid source. Sorry.

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Everyone has political motivations. You're going to entirely discount a group that studies migration from the most esteemed university in the UK because you don't like what someone puts on their twitter feed?

Yep. It suggests bias in the methods used to collect and publish data.

This is perfectly rational. Do you trust political polling from pollsters with party affiliation? I hope not.

Who do you know who's genuinely not political? People have biases all over the place. They're not going to disappear - understand them, acknowledge them, interpret them. Don't just shrug your shoulders and say "nah I don't like that". They're not publishing opinion pieces - it's research.

Now we're making progress: I don't.

Over the last couple years, I've started mentally putting a "P(BULLSHIT)" next to every source I read. The estimate keeps growing.

While you might want to make this an ad hominem attack, all I can say is that my probability estimates are pretty darn bipartisan.

>from the most esteemed university in the UK

Isn't usually the most "esteemed" establishments that are closer to the party line?

That's par for the course of being "esteemed".

>I've been following Madeline Sumption on Twitter for a while. I think she has a political motivation and I don't consider the Migration Observatory to be a valid source. Sorry.

I don't know them, but I'll take your word for it. However, will point out that it is in no way worse than the source you provided (no source)

How about Migration Watch?

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-population-count...

Compared to the total non-UK born population, Pakistan + Bangladesh are a tiny blip.

Another source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politi...