That's not at all what he said. What he said was "truth is truth if they've got high quality data to back up assertions," and "a lot of people believe dumb and

That's not at all what he said. What he said was "truth is truth if they've got high quality data to back up assertions," and "a lot of people believe dumb and backward ideas about other groups, and they'll twist and cherry pick the data to try to back up their biases without the nuance of presentation shown here." The difference is clear enough that your response appears a bit twisted and cherry-picked. I have no idea why anyone could think that such a vastly sweeping generalization such as "all sides do exactly the same thing" might be anything other than false, but what is contrasted here is exactly two instances, two sides, in which people are not doing exactly the same thing. There is, on the one hand, the careful presentation of nuanced data in good faith — without a witting ulterior motive — and on the other hand, the selection of data on the basis of its ability to appear supportive of an a priori conclusion, something that can be done unwittingly, but which is just as often done wittingly.