On Data (1950-1959)

"Anyone can easily misuse good data." (William E Deming, "Some Theory of Sampling", 1950)

"Data have an ephemeralness, a rhapsodic spontaneity, a nakedness so utterly at variance with the orderly instincts that pervade our being and with the given unity of our own experience as to be unfit for use in the building of reality. The constructs, on the other hand, are foot-loose, subjective, and altogether too fertile with logical implication  to serve in their indiscriminate totality as material for the real world. They do, however, contain the solid logical substance which a stable reality must contain." (Henry Margenau ,"The Nature of Physical Reality: A Philosophy of Modern Physics", 1950)

"Not even the most subtle and skilled analysis can overcome completely the unreliability of basic data." (Roy D G Allen, "Statistics for Economists", 1951)

"The enthusiastic use of statistics to prove one side of a case is not open to criticism providing the work is honestly and accurately done, and providing the conclusions are not broader than indicated by the data. This type of work must not be confused with the unfair and dishonest use of both accurate and inaccurate data, which too commonly occurs in business. Dishonest statistical work usually takes the form of: (1) deliberate misinterpretation of data; (2) intentional making of overestimates or underestimates; and (3) biasing results by using partial data, making biased surveys, or using wrong statistical methods." (John R Riggleman & Ira N Frisbee, "Business Statistics", 1951)

"The technical analysis of any large collection of data is a task for a highly trained and expensive man who knows the mathematical theory of statistics inside and out. Otherwise the outcome is likely to be a collection of drawings - quartered pies, cute little battleships, and tapering rows of sturdy soldiers in diversified uniforms - interesting enough in the colored Sunday supplement, but hardly the sort of thing from which to draw reliable inferences." (Eric T Bell, "Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)

"Mathematics, springing from the soil of basic human experience with numbers and data and space and motion, builds up a far-flung architectural structure composed of theorems which reveal insights into the reasons behind appearances and of concepts which relate totally disparate concrete ideas." (Saunders MacLane, "Of Course and Courses", The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 61 (3), 1954)

"When you learn how to mobilize your data and bring them to bear on your problems, you are no longer a rank amateur." (Edward Hodnett, "The Art of Problem Solving", 1955)

"We should admit in theory what is already very largely a case in practice, that the main currency of scientific information is the secondary sources in the form of abstracts, reports, tables, etc., and that the primary sources are only for detailed reference by very few people. It is possible that the fate of most scientific papers will be not to be read by anyone who uses them, but with luck they will furnish an item, a number, some facts or data to such reports which may, but usually will not, lead to the original paper being consulted. This is very sad but it is the inevitable consequence of the growth of science." (John D Bernal, "The Supply of Information to the Scientist: Some Problems of the Present Day", Journal of Documentation Vol. 13, 1957)

"Physicists do not start from hypotheses; they start from data. By the time a law has been fixed into an H-D [hypothetico-deductive] system, really original physical thinking is over." (Norwood R Hanson, "Patterns of Discovery", 1958)

"The statistics themselves prove nothing; nor are they at any time a substitute for logical thinking. There are […] many simple but not always obvious snags in the data to contend with. Variations in even the simplest of figures may conceal a compound of influences which have to be taken into account before any conclusions are drawn from the data." (Alfred R Ilersic, "Statistics", 1959)