> Who should I believe? The answer is obvious -- don't believe any statistics, anywhere, ever. Statistics aren't truths about reality, they are estimates with

> Who should I believe? The answer is obvious -- don't believe any statistics, anywhere, ever. Statistics aren't truths about reality, they are estimates with error bounds. Sometimes the error bounds aren't provided, and when they are provided, sometimes they aren't right. And when they are right, sometimes the thing being measured happens to be the worst outcome predicted by probability, i.e. utterly wrong. In a basic technical sense, any statistic has a probability that the property it measures arose from chance rather than reality. This means any statistic whatever might arise from randomness rather than reality. It's a question of probability, not truth.