The public debate around COVID-19 demonstrates our ongoing and misplaced trust in numbers

Aula, Ville (2020) The public debate around COVID-19 demonstrates our ongoing and misplaced trust in numbers. Impact of Social Sciences Blog (15 May 2020). Blog Entry.

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Abstract

COVID-19 data and numbers are everywhere. However, these numbers are also a source of debate and subject to vastly different interpretations. Every day we are posed with a question that divides even epidemiologists: what does it really mean that positive cases or mortalities are up or down? Yet the media and the public reads deep meanings into these numbers, as officials are praised or chastised based on them. Far from being self-evident and informative, Ville Aula, argues these statistics leave the public with mere spectacle, and highlights the misplaced trust that we all place in numbers.

Item Type:	Online resource (Blog Entry)
Official URL:	https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/
Additional Information:	© 2020 The Author
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology H Social Sciences > HA Statistics H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Date Deposited:	12 Jun 2020 10:03
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 10:32
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/104851

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