The Anonymous Widower

Is Publishing Statistics a Good Idea?

Statistics published today about heart operations show a very strong increase in success. This is despite warnings from the medical profession, that publishing statistics on success rates, would lead to conservative procedures.

This is a real result for openness.

I believe strongly that publishing information responsibly is always for the better.  I think too that politicians are finally getting round to this belief, with David Cameron wanting all government and political expenses to be published on the Internet.  He’s right, but he doesn’t go far enough.

What would I do?

The Health and Safety Executive has set a small precedent by publishing reasonably detailed lists of fatal incidents on their web site. But they don’t go far enough and the data is not published in a form that can easily be downloaded from the web site. This would enable analyses to be made to see if there are ways of increasing safety.

Obviously, databases of this type should be desensitised before they are put on line. For instance, I might be described as male, white, between 55 and 65 and living in St. Edmundsbury.

But suppose the following databases were available on-line and in a form such as Excel that was easily downloaded.

• Births by sex, post code, multiple birth etc.
• Deaths by sex, age, cause, smoker etc.
• Serious road accident by vehicle involved, post code, road type etc.
• Crime by type, post code, victim, clear up, sentence etc.
• Prisoner by sex, offence, age, prison etc.
• Illegal immigrant by country, sex etc.

This would remove much of the speculation beloved of the tabloid newspapers, who publish a statistic that proves their bigoted point of view.

The government and industry might like to try to keep hold of this data. They will cite confidentiality, security and other spurious reasons. However, as precedents are set, it will be extremely difficult to keep things confidential.

We will all benefit through access to these databases.

July 30, 2009 - Posted by AnonW | Health, News | Politics, Statistics