democracy! or democracy?

Herrera and Kapur make a number of interesting points regarding the pervasive nature of politics and its effect on data collection/ interpretation, and, the many inconsistencies that often seem to occur. The author’s mention the concept of a “supply chain of data production”(373) through which relevant information is filtered through a number of actors and its originally worth or meaning can, thus, be easily misconstrued. To help improve on the problems that stem from this, they offer five broad suggestions:

(1) encourage the production and dissemination of the growing literature on data quality and methods for improvement; (2) consider better ways to use data sets known to be flawed;( 3) consider incentives as an instrument for improving data quality; (4) consider ways to lower the costs of producing high-quality data; and (5) consider institutional solutions to solve certain collective action problems related to data quality.

While, the suggestions are clearly well thought out and evidently the way to go, I would agree with Foucault that politics, more often than not, pervades everything, and, as such, it is difficult and will continue to be difficult to separate ideological influence or bias within research.