The extensive role social statistics play in the everyday
workings ofmodern society goes hand-in-hand with the portrayal of
statistical practice as a purely technical matter. Linked to this is the
widely-held view of statistical data as a form of knowledge
untainted by social values or ideology. The Pocket OxfordDictionary,
for example, defines statistics as ‘numerical facts systematically
collected on a subject’, where facts are taken to be ‘things known to
be true’. This gives the statistician the seemingly enviable status of
being an expert in numerical things known to be true, systemati¬
cally collected on a subject.
Other common terms closely associated with statistical usage
further reinforce its status as factual and objective. Thus, the term
‘data’—often used to denote statistical material—derives from the
Latin word which literally translates as ‘given things’. Further¬
more, the statistical products of quantitative research are often
termed ‘findings’; nature apparently yields up its true gifts only to
those trained to search for them in an objective and dispassionate
manner. Statistical data are portrayed, then, as asocial products
practically untouched by human hand: the role ofthe statistician is
simply to clinically collect and preserve the facts.