"Stats don't lie", but statisticians do, census takers do, assumptions mislead, people are woefully lacking in numeracy...
Taking any numbers or especially their attendant assumptions at face value was always a risky proposition. It's not something new to current circumstances.
Conversation
Feel like every statistical argument should come with one of these Twitter warnings saying "As a human being, you probably don't understand a word of this."
1
3
There is nothing funny or quirky about this.
Entire sectors of society are built around the ability of a narrow group of people to fudge and misrepresent one of the most notoriously difficult and counterintuitive fields in human science. It's an informational void.
Replying to
Not because you can't make good models based on data, not because you can't do good work in statistics, but because the sheer signal/noise-ratio along with blatant and widespread campaigns of disinformation makes the actual quality of conversation on the topic less than 0.