Credibility Of Federal Statistics Damaged

The erroneous data on Canada's 2004 trade in cultural goods, such as CDs and videos, were first placed on the Statistics Canada website March 29. The agency then posted a correction to the material May 19, and alerted users to the corrected numbers in a website notice five days later. "The errors were unfortunate but, as we know, these things do happen," a senior official said in an internal e-mail at the time. "I am pleased that everyone worked so efficiently and in such good humour to get the corrections made. . . . It was a great team effort." Trouble is, the so-called corrected numbers were themselves incorrect. Officials in Canadian Heritage, the department that paid StatsCan $144,000 to produce the trade reports, were the first to twig to the statistical snafus. "One person in our shop discovered some anomalies," said Pierre Derome, a trade and investment official at Canadian Heritage. As well, a trade official at Foreign Affairs suspected something was wrong with the statistics. http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=81b51470-3b7b-4075-a14a-8f3e3efb7094

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