"Research backed up by statistics is practically a requirement for publishing in high-impact, academic journals," or so claimed statistics Professor Jesús López-Fidalgo, director of the School of Industrial Engineering at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, at an Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) seminar.

In his presentation, entitled "Chance does not exist," he explained how statistics act from the perspective of possible manipulation in the process of planning, data collection, analysis and interpretation.

"Throughout the process there are many times when some kind of manipulation can be found and it may be intentional or not," he said. In that regard, he stressed that in many cases there is no intent to deceive, but rather a problem with "a lack of training in statistics, or not having the support of a specialist, who are in great demand, with few too qualified statistics professionals to meet that demand."

"Statistics should be part of the general culture"

As an example of manipulation, he mentioned that in the collection phase, data that does not fit or is too extreme might be modified or deleted. However, he recalled that statistics itself "has procedures to identify potential pitfalls and they are based on the intrinsic beauty of actual data."

On the other hand, he said that the wrong type of analysis might be selected, for example, in trying to repeat an analysis other researchers used by adapting it to a different context in which the analysis is no longer valid.

Professor López-Fidalgo mentioned that the interpretation phase is perhaps where most intentional manipulation takes place: "There are cases where the statistical results do not reveal what researchers want and they decide not to mention them."

Finally, Professor López-Fidalgo stressed that the best way for citizens to protect themselves from data manipulation is for statistics to become part of general culture: "Just as we know where a certain river starts or who reigned at a specific time in history, citizens should know the basics of statistics. It would help them a lot in everyday life and help them form a critical eye for the information that reaches them, which is often overly sensational."