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Think It Through: the Clearer Thinking Podcast
Think It Through: the Clearer Thinking Podcast
Episode 40: Why Good Data is Essential for Good Thinking (And What Happens When It's Taken Away)
In this episode, April talks about why good data (current, accurate, and trustworthy) is so important to good thinking. She is perturbed about the current administration's deliberate attempts to delete, change, or hide critical government data. However, she is also hopeful that the many efforts to protect and preserve this data will be successful.
Episode 40 Show Notes--just citations because my explanations took up too much data...
https://www.getrightdata.com/blog/why-quality-matters-the-10-biggest-data-quality-disasters
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/white-house-covid-web-page-page-supporting-lab/story?id=120956514
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31012025/trump-administration-war-on-science/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-data-hoarders-resisting-trumps-purge
https://libguides.umn.edu/c.php?g=1449575&p=10778647
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Government_watchdog_groups_in_the_United_States
Episode 40: Why Good Data is Essential for Good Thinking (And What Happens When It’s Taken Away)
Opening
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Hello, and welcome to Think It Through. Before I begin, I just want to give a short disclaimer—this episode took a long time to write, mostly because things kept changing, and I would have to go back and do more research and rewrite everything. Although things are still in flux as they relate to this topic, I had to stop somewhere and just publish it! So all I can say is that my information was current at some point...
Ok, let’s begin this episode with a question--what entity is the largest collector, collator, keeper, and distributor of economic, scientific, and demographic information on the planet? If you said the United States government, you’re right. And before you @ me and say that Google takes that prize, it really doesn’t. Well, in terms of personal, commercial, and behavioral data, okay then, that’s Google’s area of expertise. But I’m talking about where we find the information, the cold, hard facts, that we depend on to Bottom of Formdetermine what to do, the info that we need to make it through the day—that has long been one of the most important jobs of the US government. Now, if you’ve been listening for a while, (and thanks so much if you have because I’m just wildly inconsistent about publishing new episodes), you know that I do my best to find good, solid information that’s available to everyone, not hiding behind some paywall or on an academic database that many listeners can’t access; I do that so you can look those sources up for yourself and find out more about the topics I discuss. Many of these sources are other academics, doctors, therapists, and science writers who have access to original information behind paywalls or in databases that might be difficult for the general public to find. Nearly all these sources also depend on the information that is found on government websites—like census data or scientific datasets on any number of topics. They then use that information to write articles for popular science websites, newspapers, magazines, and books, that explain the information from those primary sources in a way that’s more understandable to those of us who aren’t experts in those fields. These sources are known as secondary sources because they use the data from the original, or primary source, as the basis for their articles or books. These are the kinds of sources that I’m looking for while researching my episodes, all to provide you with clear and reliable information to help you understand the topics I discuss. And—you’re welcome.
So today, we’re diving into a fundamental truth: Good thinking depends on good data. But what happens when access to that information is limited—or worse, erased? What if, say, a science writer who’s consistently used a particular us.gov database to get critical information for the articles they write is suddenly faced with a 404 error and the words “Page Not Found” on that website? In this episode we’re going to explore why reliable information is the foundation of critical thinking and how the deletion of government data could have serious consequences for science, policy, and even YOUR everyday decision-making. Let’s get started.
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The Role of Data in Clear Thinking
- First of all, what is data? According to IBM, who should know from data, it’s this: “Data is a collection of facts, numbers, words, observations or other useful information.” Governments, organizations, corporations and other entities collect data from various sources and in various formats, including both subjective, qualitative data and numerical, or quantitative data. Some examples of data include government statistics on every conceivable topic, census records, healthcare records, or sales and purchase records. In fact, if it can be observed, counted, collated, and expressed as a collection of information, it’s data.
- So, why does good thinking require good data?
o Anyone who works with computers is familiar with the phrase “Garbage in, garbage out” as the concept that flawed, incorrect input leads to an output of similar quality. The same thing applies to our brains--To put it simply, thinking is only as good as the information it’s based on. I’ll bet you can come up with at least one example of how you came to a wrong conclusion because of something someone told you that wasn’t correct. For instance, if your work colleague gives you some critical data that you need to complete a project, and after you’ve spent hours working on it you find out that information they gave you was from last year instead of this year, the outcome could be that you’ve wasted your time, have to redo the whole project, maybe even missed a deadline. Or depending on the importance of your project, it could be far worse than simply wasted time and could put people’s safety and even their lives at risk.
- Inaccurate, incomplete, or missing data leads to flawed conclusions, and the results of that can be anything from annoying to disastrous.
- Here’s an example—On December 11, 1998, NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter, a probe sent to study the atmosphere of Mars. 286 days later, the probe was destroyed upon entering the Martian atmosphere. The problem? After an investigation, it was determined that one piece of Lockheed Martin software was based on US units like inches while other pieces of NASA software were in metric units like centimeters. That discrepancy caused the spacecraft’s entry trajectory to be much lower than planned, and because of that, it was destroyed in the atmosphere.
- According to NASA, here’s what that mistake cost in today’s dollars:
- Total for the orbiter and lander was $336 million, $160 million for launching it, and $75 million for mission operations.
- So--this one mistake, misreading of the data, not checking things thoroughly—cost a total of $571 million in today’s dollars. A more than half billion-dollar mistake because of incorrect information, set Mars research back not just in dollars but in years of wasted time.
Ok, so it’s obvious that bad data caused a bad outcome in that case. But you might be thinking, well that’s a horrible waste of money but how does that affect me? Maybe a botched Mars probe doesn’t affect your daily life, but data does inform almost every aspect of what you do on a regular basis, so if there’s bad or missing data out there it can certainly impact you in some way.
According to the article “Data Driven Life: how data shapes our daily decisions,” we expect that data will be available to help us navigate everyday life in ways we often don’t notice. For instance, you check the weather app on your phone to determine how to plan your day or use Google maps to figure out the best way to get where you need to go, or open your banking app to check your balance. The article calls data the “invisible conductor of our digital symphony.” We trust that data will be there when we need it, and we don’t really think about it too much until it’s not there. And certainly if your weather app or your bank app glitches and you can’t get the information you need, that can be either mildly annoying or, depending on the circumstances, very problematic. And talk about problematic--Recently, air traffic controllers at Newark Liberty International Airport lost critical data about incoming flights due to an equipment outage. They were unable to locate or communicate with pilots for about 90 seconds before radar data was restored. This happened twice within a two-week period, and although midair disasters were fortunately avoided in both cases, it does illustrate the fact that this kind of critical data loss could have had a potentially catastrophic outcome.
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Data Deletion Under the Trump Administration
It should be obvious by now that having access to good, solid data is important, and that incorrect or missing data could make our lives more difficult. In the examples we just looked at, though, that data wasn’t intentionally removed or deliberately incorrect. The loss of the Mars probe was due to using two different types of data that didn’t work well together, and the Newark airport data losses have been linked to an antiquated air traffic control system that desperately needs an upgrade.
However, in recent months reports have surfaced of key government data being deliberately deleted, changed, or hidden by members of the Trump administration. Climate data, healthcare statistics, and economic reports, that were previously published through agencies like the EPA, the CDC, and the Census Bureau, are now missing or altered. For example—ABC News reported on April 18, 2025, that the website Covid.gov, which was created to help people access Covid resources like vaccines, testing, and treatments, was recently changed to redirect to a new landing page called “Lab Leak: True Origins of Covid-19.” The original information is no longer available there, so if you go to that site hoping to find out about getting a vaccine, what kind of tests are available and how accurate they are, or maybe you have Covid and you need treatment, or maybe you’re trying to find reliable information about Long Covid, well, you’re out of luck. You will, however, get to read about the current administration’s claim that the pandemic was the result of a lab leak and was NOT of natural origin. Whether that’s actually the case or not is completely outside of the purpose that Covid.gov was designed to fulfill. And the website is now useless to people who need to know the best and most current information about how to protect themselves from Covid 19, or how to treat it if they have it. Can you still find most of that information elsewhere? Possibly, but it’s likely you wouldn’t find all that information in one location, you’d probably have to search around for different pieces of it. Covid.gov served an important public purpose, and its current iteration as, frankly, a piece of propaganda means the public has lost a previously dependable source that contained vital information to help them make the best decisions about their health.
And that’s just one of many examples of missing or suppressed data that will have real-world consequences. Currently, somewhere between 1000 and 8000 US government web pages across 90 government agencies have been deleted. Yeah, it’s hard to pin down an exact number, trust me I tried but it’s pretty nebulous, and that number is changing as we speak. Let’s look at just a few of those cases:
· The first one has to do with the Removal of Climate Data from Government Websites--Since January 2025 the current administration has initiated the removal of climate-related information from federal websites like the EPA and NOAA. The National Security Archive, an investigative journalism and research center, reports that the administration deleted all references to climate change from the EPA’s homepage and other parts of its website. Although the website’s “Climate Change Impact” page still existed when their report was written, it was buried deep in the website, making it very hard to find. Other government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service, have had climate change information removed as well.
· This has had a major impact on access to climate data by scientists, researchers, and the public. The removal of this data doesn’t mean climate change isn’t a “thing” anymore, it just means that the current administration doesn’t think it’s a thing and has no intention of acknowledging it, thus compromising our ability to track climate and environmental changes. And it doesn’t just affect us here in the US—agencies worldwide rely on U.S. data for global climate assessments.
· The second example is the Deletion of CDC Health Resources--The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed many health-related websites and datasets earlier this year, including those on HIV and LGBTQ health. This was done because of an executive order requiring federal agencies to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and to recognize only two biological sexes, male and female. To be clear, some of the programs and pages were restored by court order in mid-February, including:
§ The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which tracks U.S. high school students’ health behaviors. The restored page now has a disclaimer from the Trump Administration saying that any information on the page “promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate.” So yes, they put it back, but they are not happy about it, and according to NPR, some of the links to key results on that page go nowhere.
§ Also, a food safety page that was originally called “Safer Food Choices for Pregnant People.” was deleted, but then restored with the new title of “Safer Food Choices for Pregnant Women.” The word “people” was considered too inclusive, so nobody got to read about safe food choices during pregnancy until that word was changed.
§ And the Social Vulnerability Index, which helps identify communities that are vulnerable to the effects of disasters and public health emergencies, was initially taken down, but seems to have been restored in its original condition…maybe?
- There’s a fair amount of uncertainty out there about what might be different on these pages. Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and dean of Yale University's School of Public Health says that she and other health officials are trying to figure out what is still missing and what may have been changed. According to CIDRAP, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, the removal of or changes to these resources impedes access to critical information necessary for tracking disease trends, developing prevention strategies, and providing healthcare services. This lack of accessible and accurate data also compromises the ability to respond effectively to public health emergencies.
· The final example I’ll discuss here is the elimination of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Report--This report was the result of a bipartisan commission that had been mandated by the previous Trump administration. In it, the commission laid out recommendations to combat the crisis of missing, trafficked, and murdered Indigenous woman and girls. But the DOJ removed the entire final report from their website; the link remains but goes to a dead page.
· This unexpected and troubling deletion left activists and indigenous communities without access to crucial data and recommendations, and hindered efforts to allocate funding and other resources effectively. Charlotte Gonzales, policy and advocacy director for the coalition to stop violence against native women, said when she was informed of this removal, “A lot of community members, along with our staff, are emotionally exhausted every day we hear about new executive orders coming out … And so, once we heard this, I think our mind instantly went to the fact that Native women will die if we don’t have federal funding.”
· To be clear, there is still a lot of information on the DOJ website about Missing and murdered indigenous peoples, as well as on the Government Accountability office’s web pages. Yet this important document is still missing from the DOJ web pages. Fortunately, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center has a version of it that is accessible, so it can still be read. But whether the government will support the committee’s specific recommendations and put them into practice remains to be seen.
These examples underscore the critical importance of preserving access to reliable government data. Deletion of this data hampers scientific research and can pose significant risks to public health and safety. It impacts every segment of the population—like small business owners who rely on up-to-date economic data to plan business strategies; like your doctor, who depends on accurate, current medical data to keep you healthy; and as I said earlier, it impacts your ability to get the data you need to make dozens of daily decisions.
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What Can We Do?
It’s become clear to those who depend on government data that it needs to be protected and preserved. The current administration began deleting data very soon after Trump was sworn in, and although some individuals and organizations may have had the foresight to download and save some critical government data sets before January 20th, we may never know how much information has already been irretrievably lost. Universities and other independent organizations have begun to create their own databases to archive government data and preserve this vital information. The New Yorker’s Julian Lucas wrote a great article about this effort, titled “The Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge.” It goes into detail about this complex and laborious process being carried out by a well-organized resistance that he refers to as “A loose collection of archivists and librarians” who belong to organizations like the Internet Archive, the Environmental and Data Governance Initiative, and major university libraries like MITs. I’ll put a link to this article in the Show Notes—I highly recommend you read it. I’ll also put a link to a University of Minnesota libguide that has information on groups performing data rescue efforts, including the End of Term Web Archive, the Wayback Machine, and Harvard Law School Library’s Archive of Data.gov.
Equally important is the role of journalists and watchdog groups in keeping information accessible. The National Press Foundation, for example, is concerned about the risk to education data and has given journalists alternative resources. And the Journalist’s Resource, a webpage that helps journalists bridge the gap between academia and journalism, is involved in preserving data as well. I’ll put links to those webpages, as well as to a Wikipedia page that lists watchdog groups; obviously not all of them are focused on this particular topic, but it’s good to know who is out there keeping an eye on what the government is up to.
What’s really sad, at least for me, is that I spent decades teaching research methods to students, and one of the things I told them is that, no matter who was in charge in the country, and no matter how they personally felt about the government, that they could trust its huge storehouse of information. That the US government was the most reliable collector, collator, and publisher of information in the world. That there were thousands of government workers whose jobs were to collect data and create reports from that data that we could then access on government websites and use to make informed decisions about our lives. And while there are still over 300,000 data sets available for anyone to access on Data.gov, I can’t say with certainty that I fully trust that information anymore; at this point so much government data has gone from being accurate, current, and reliable to being either untrustworthy, out-of-date (because so many of those data collectors and technicians have lost their jobs and data sets may not be getting updated and new ones will not be added) or—the data that once existed is now--just gone.
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Closing
I don’t want to end this on a negative note, so I’ll just say that there are people out there who are working to save critical government data, and journalists who are working to shine a light on those who delete, hide, or manipulate it to suit their preferred worldview. If this is important to you, you might contact and volunteer with one of these organizations that are fighting to preserve data. But if that’s not a realistic goal for you, the one thing you can do is educate yourself on identifying reliable sources of information. Many of my previous episodes focus on finding good, trustworthy sources that you can depend on, like episodes 7 and 13. And episodes 18, 19, and 20 focus on who you can and should trust, oh and my last episode, about how to recognize propaganda is a good one too. Ok, maybe you should just go back and listen to all of them. And don’t forget to look at the show notes. I just want all of us to be vigilant, informed, and committed to the truth. And I hope you use the information in this episode to help you think it through.
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