Minister of Truth: Meet Britain’s Top Data Cop
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By Mathew Honan
- February 22, 2010 |
- 12:00 pm |
- Wired March 2010
Alpha geek Richard Alldritt
Photo: Ed Hepburne-Scott
Did you know that 62 percent of all cited statistics are bogus? OK, we made that up. But after a 2007 poll found that barely a third of all British citizens trust published stats, Parliament formed a math-police squad to investigate. The top cop in the UK Statistics Authority is Richard Alldritt, an expert in how governments fudge the numbers.
Alldritt began his career analyzing crime data at the Home Office in London. “I got hooked on what you might call the politics of statistics,” he says. Now, as head of assessment, he monitors figures from roughly 200 public agencies. He opens the data to peer review, publicly calls out bureaucrats, and even drags them before Parliament if need be. He has scolded the Home Office for cherry-picking data to suggest a drop in knife crime and chided the Government Equalities Office for exaggerating the gender pay gap. “So far, no set of statistics has had a completely clean bill of heath,” Alldritt says. Not a single one? We’ll need to see documentation before we accept a sweeping statement like that.
