<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics"- Mark Twain<\/p>\n
COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront the importance of proper statistical data. One of the most reputed medical journal in the world, Lancet, published a paper concluding that the medicine hydroxychloroquine (a medicine for preventing and treating malaria) is ineffective in treating Covid-19. Based on that study, the World Health Organisation stopped the use of hydroxychloroquine in its Solidary Trials, a trial of different medicines to treat the<\/p>\n
Covid-19. Lancet had to retract the paper which came to that conclusion because the process of data collection was found to be doubtful. Lancet had to face embarrassment and backlash for its failure to crosscheck the process of data collection on which the paper was based. Closer home, Patanjali, one of the well-known faces of Indian products promoted by the yoga guru, Baba Ramdev, has come under fire because of the medicine, Coronil, which claims to<\/p>\n
cure COVID-19 patients. It is reported that the medicine was based on clinical trials with a sample size of only 95 patients (45 given Coronil and 50 on placebo). A clinical trial of a sample size of 95 is definitely not enough especially for a medicine which claims to cure the disease during a pandemic. Delhi Government has come under fire for not testing people enough and trying to hide the number of deaths due to the Corona Virus for which recently, the Home Ministry has issued guidelines for more testing in the national capital. Cases are bound to increase in Delhi as testing increases in the coming days and weeks. In fact, with the new guidelines on testing, cases are already spiralling up.<\/p>\n
Telangana has been under fire for low testing. With a high test positivity rate, there is fear that Telangana is sitting on a Covid bomb, hidden due to low testing. Farther home, US president, Donald Trump, and the Brazilian president, Bolsonaro, and their attempt to ignore the facts on the pandemic in their countries and how they face the highest cases and deaths in their countries need no emphasis. Statistics and data are the eyes of policymakers, researchers, and everyone who has a stake in the society. A society can ignore correct data at its own peril. For too long, Nagaland has been fudging data without abandonment. It is high<\/p>\n
time we, as a society, understand the critical role proper data plays in our well-being.<\/p>\n
We have often escaped with poor data because we are of no consequence to the country – being poor and small in population. Any study on the country clubs the northeast separately. A section on the northeast thus become inconsequential on the whole country, barring Assam perhaps. While we may fool others, we are the ones who suffer.<\/p>\n
To my knowledge, some ways in which data manipulation takes place are the following:<\/p>\n
1. In school education, there are many government schools which have very few numbers of students due to the parents preference of private schools. The government often threatens to shut them down. What the schools do to remedy the situation is inflate the number of students they have, showing on the register students who are clearly not in schools. Perhaps, this explains why our gross enrolment ratio in higher education is among the lowest in the<\/p>\n
country.<\/p>\n
2. A person living in a town registers in both the town and in the village – a clear case of double counting.<\/p>\n
3. Estimate in providing data when Central government under different ministries enquire of them without verification. Thus, a government official sitting in his office provides the data for the existence of facilities of institutions under his watch without verifying from the institutions. There must be many more. It is a researcher’s nightmare to use secondary data from Nagaland to do proper analysis. Our researchers’ best social science studies (mostly Economics?) are based on correlation studies. The conclusion goes something like<\/p>\n
this "there is correlation between the two variables; there is no correlation between the two variables". Useful policy prescriptions have not arisen from such research.<\/p>\n
The researchers also cannot be blamed since often (1) a particular data set simply disappears for a certain year (s) only to reappear in the future, (2) data does not make sense at all due to the fluctuation (an approximate 64% growth in population between 1991-2001 and a negative growth rate of -0.05% between 2001-2011 is only an example), (3) incompatible data sets, often the data being collected is simply clubbed with another variable and the first data set cannot be separated in the clubbed variable.<\/p>\n
There is a competency in data collection which is needed. For 2021 census, even though census data collection comes under the central home ministry, nodal agency being Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, the state will provide the man power. It is imperative that strict cross-checking of population data is done through random sampling. If a sample is found to be manipulated, the whole population of the district should be rejected, and the population data collected again. The incentive for a village\/district to cheat is very high. As also is the disincentive for not cheating since everyone will cheat. And yet, if everyone cheats, no one gains. That is our dilemma.<\/p>\n
Chothazo Nienu, Hyderabad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Importance of Correct Data<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}