If my post in not so clear, .........ask about it
So if I question the data or statistics given equals me to 'prefer mythology and bigotry'.
But you don't question data and statistics, you dismiss it out-of-hand:
Agree. A bit like statistics. Not worth the paper it's written on.
Similarly, you don't question the misrepresented news articles, the urban mythology, the racist propaganda, you accept it without question.
Did you question yours?
My what?
Data is data and represents the real world..
Did you accept it without questioning?
Accept what?
You accepted the data without questioning and quoted them as a fact to Sooey. I asked if you questioned the data before you said it was a representation of the real world (a fact). Did you do your own research? Wiki is not 100%, you know this.
Are you going to accuse me of changing the data in Wikipedia again?
When I ask someone for measurements, say of their room, which I've seen a couple of times, and I'd guess 3 to 4 metres wide by say 5-6 metres long, and they tell me it's 3.6 feet by 5.2 feet, alarm bells start ringing.
But if they tell me it's 3,6 metres by 5.2 metres, I feel comfortable with their measurements.
Similarly, if I consult wikipedia for some data and it provides data which appears to reconcile with the same data from other sources, which I've previously been aware of, I'm comfortable with it.
So your assumption that I accepted the data without question is fallacious. I always have an idea in my mind of what the data should look like. if it fits, that's OK. If it doesn't alarm bells ring.
Data on this kind of subject can be changed by corruption, greed, propaganda as well as not being gathered correctly. For example, can we trust a government to tell us how many people here are immigrants or foreign nationals? Do they even know themselves 100%? I hope we can but this topic is very political, has been for a fair few years now so I do not trust it 100% as a cold hard fact.
Same goes for the amount of foreign folk in prisons - who gives us this figure, who releases the statement to the press and do they or the press have an agenda? This is what I mean by questioning data.
OMG, it's the conspiracy theories again.
My problem with surveys is that there are too many variables. Surveys, unless it has been carried out by every single person is not data or truth. They are a guide at best
This isn't a survey of people's attitudes. It was data from a census!
No doubt in your conspiracy invaded world, the question "what ethnicity would you describe yourself as" is a leading question.