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Comment by noitpmeder | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the best move at this point is to move toward the BLS releasing all the raw data, but do not publish conclusions of their own? Then at least you have a central "unbiased" (if that's ever an actual state) agency responsible for collection, and leave it up to the more polarized outlets/statisticians/... to produce their own interpretations.

E.g. similar to Census data -- central data collection managed by govt, generalized anonymous data released for interpretation by anyone.

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BLS already does this. It's not the most friendly interface, but you can directly query the database from its own website here: https://data.bls.gov/dataQuery/search. There's also a public API: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm.

The BLS gathers data to support its methodology. If the methodology were biased, having access to the raw data would not solve the problem. You could always claim "BLS is ignoring X".

That opens the door for lots of Wrong conclusions either lack of knowledge and maliciousness.

Statistics is often counterintuitive.

Sure, but the alternative is implicitly trusting the conclusions and interpretations the govt agency, who are (almost assuredly) humans with biases and not impartial robots.

It's a lot harder to attack general best practice statistic collection than it is to throw shade at an editorial. (not that certain administrations have issues attacking best practice science)

Issue also arise "easily" when the people charged with producing editorials are political appointees who are easy targets for subsequent administrations looking to shift blame. (seems we're at this stage now)

Except that they already do publish all the data, and their methods.

Thats what I don't get. You can fire the messenger, but as long as data and methods are published, anybody can check it out and verify it.

Guess biggest worry would be if BLS actually starts keeping secrets and just publishing numbers they want.

See also: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

Was on news yesterday, not sure if will happen. But Trump now also does not trust the Census and wants to do another one. So then what happens when we can't even trust the Census? And Totals are just gamed for Congressional seats.

Yeah we live in a crazy world. Honestly the fact that they don't trust it probably lends more credence toward their results -- it's extremely unfortunate that many of these agencies/systems/... live under the executive branch's whims and not as part of congressionally-mandated programs where it'd be more difficult to meddle.

The current 2-party system with fixed terms almost lends itself to promoting the political appointee system where entire department head counts turn over after a change in ruling party. If you're a "career" politician it's a no-brainer to fill these positions wholesale with people who are favorable to your world view, or donated to your administration, or spend lots of money at your hotel chain, ...

Sounds like he doesn't want non-citizens to be counted. I'd rather they get counted, but maybe not used for determining seats in congress. It's kind of important to know how many people are present in an area and how that changes over time. Deporting illegals (like it or dislike it) is a separate thing from knowing how many people are in a state. Come to think of it, even if you're in favor of the deportations, you gotta have accurate data to know where to deploy resources. This desire to fake the data is just bizarre.

Its not that he doesn't trust the census. It's that they want a census marking US citizens vs. immigrants and illegal immigrants. It doesn't matter what they say so much, more what the end goal is.

Voting districts with higher populations receive a larger number of representatives. Currently we do not differentiate and legally the census defines these numbers which is very hard to change. If a census is run with these identified you have strong legal arguments with the "Current" Supreme Court to remove those immigrants/illegal immigrants from the representative totals.

The side benefit for this admin is many legal immigrants and some residents become more untrustworthy of those style questions and also do not answer again lowering representation in those districts further.

The Census is inaccurate if the goal is legally removing those people from the representative counts.

Well, in this one tiny aspect, Trump may have a point. If we're determining voting districts, and non-citizens can't vote, then using only citizens to determine the size of the voting districts makes some sense.

But trying to do it now makes no rational sense, and neither does the Texas redistricting move. It's all about the 2026 election, and given how he's trying every possible angle, no matter how unprecedented, I think he knows he's in trouble.

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