Metrics Shape Our Beliefs and Inferences
Social scientists often blithely use easily accessible numbers, like GDP, as a basis of their empirical models, without enquiring sufficiently into the limitations and biases in the metrics. Flawed or biased statistics can lead us to make incorrect inferences.
if there are systematic measurement errors in, say, the output of the public sector, inferences made about the consequences of a large public sector on overall economic performance may be biased, simply because the larger the sector, the more the distortion.