英国卫报:你还在相信统计数据吗?(9)

As indicators¹ of health, prosperity, equality, opinion and quality of life have come to tell us who we are collectively and whether things are getting better or worse, politicians have leaned heavily on statistics to buttress² their authority. Often, they lean too heavily, stretching evidence too far, interpreting data too loosely, to serve their cause. But that is an inevitable³ hazard of the prevalence of numbers in public life, and need not necessarily trigger the type of wholehearted rejections⁴ of expertise⁵ that we have witnessed recently.

随着健康指标、繁荣指标、平等指标、意见指标和生活质量指标使我们逐渐意识到我们是谁、情况是在变好还是在变坏，政治家们也变得严重依赖统计数据来巩固自己的权威。通常情况下他们太过依赖、夸大证据，对数据的解释过于松散，以致于无法为自己的事业服务。但这是公共生活中数字泛滥的一个不可避免的危险，并不一定会引发我们最近看到的那种对专业知识的全盘否定。

In many ways, the contemporary populist attack on "experts" is born out of the same resentment⁶ as the attack on elected representatives. In talking of society as a whole, in seeking to govern the economy as a whole, both politicians and technocrats⁷ are believed to have "lost touch" with how it feels to be a single citizen in particular. Both statisticians and politicians have fallen into the trap of "seeing like a state", to use a phrase from the anarchist⁸ political thinker James C Scott. Speaking scientifically about the nation – for instance in terms of macroeconomics – is an insult to those who would prefer to rely on memory and narrative⁹ for their sense of nationhood, and are sick of being told that their "imagined community" does not exist.

当代民粹主义者对“专家”的攻击和对民选代表的攻击在很多方面源自同样的怨恨。人们认为，在将社会作为一个整体来谈论时、在寻求将经济作为一个整体来治理时，政治家和技术官僚都“迷失”了自己作为一个特定公民的感觉。用无政府主义政治思想家詹姆斯·C·斯科特的话来说，统计学家和政治家都掉进了“看起来像一个国家”的陷阱。科学地谈论国家——例如从宏观经济学的角度——是对那些更愿意依靠记忆和叙述来获得民族认同感的人的侮辱，他们厌倦了别人告诉他们“想象中的社区”并不存在。

On the other hand, statistics (together with elected representatives) performed an adequate job of supporting a credible¹⁰ public discourse¹¹ for decades if not centuries. What changed?

另一方面，统计数据(以及民选代表)在几十年甚至几百年的时间里在支持可信的公众话语方面发挥了足够的作用。那么它改变了什么？

The crisis of statistics is not quite as sudden as it might seem. For roughly 450 years, the great achievement of statisticians has been to reduce the complexity¹² and fluidity of national populations into manageable, comprehensible facts and figures. Yet in recent decades, the world has changed dramatically, thanks to the cultural politics that emerged in the 1960s and the reshaping of the global economy that began soon after. It is not clear that the statisticians have always kept pace with these changes. Traditional forms of statistical¹³ classification and definition are coming under strain from more fluid identities, attitudes and economic pathways. Efforts to represent demographic, social and economic changes in terms of simple, well-recognised indicators are losing legitimacy¹⁴.

统计危机并不像看上去那么突然。在大约450年的时间里，统计学家的伟大成就在于将国家人口的复杂性和流动性降低为易于管理、易于理解的事实和数据。然而，近几十年来，由于20世纪60年代出现的文化政治以及此后不久开始的全球经济重塑，世界发生了巨大变化，目前还不清楚统计学家们是否一直与这些变化保持同步。传统的统计分类和定义形式正受到越来越不稳定的身份、态度和经济路径的压力。用简单、公认的指标来代表人口、社会和经济变化的做法正在失去其合法性。

1 indicators   

（仪器上显示温度、压力、耗油量等的）指针( indicator的名词复数 )； 指示物； （车辆上的）转弯指示灯； 指示信号

参考例句：

• The economic indicators are better than expected. 经济指标比预期的好。
• It is still difficult to develop indicators for many concepts used in social science. 为社会科学领域的许多概念确立一个指标仍然很难。

2 buttress   

n.支撑物；v.支持

参考例句：

• I don't think they have any buttress behind them.我认为他们背后没有什么支持力量。
• It was decided to buttress the crumbling walls.人们决定建造扶壁以支撑崩塌中的墙。

3 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

4 rejections   

拒绝( rejection的名词复数 )； 摒弃； 剔除物； 排斥

参考例句：

• Most writers endure a number of rejections before being published. 大部分作家经历无数次的退稿才守得云开，作品得到发表。
• Supervise workers and monitors production quality to minimize rejections. 管理工人，监控生产质量，减少退货。

5 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。

6 resentment   

n.怨愤，忿恨

参考例句：

• All her feelings of resentment just came pouring out.她一股脑儿倾吐出所有的怨恨。
• She cherished a deep resentment under the rose towards her employer.她暗中对她的雇主怀恨在心。

7 technocrats   

n.技术专家，专家政治论者( technocrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Few business barons remained. They were replaced by "technocrats," who became the heads of corporations. 企业巨头所剩无几，大多已被“技术专家”所代替，这些人成了公司的领导。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• However, bankers called the technocrats' bluff and proceeded to lend with gusto. 但是，银行家们称技术专家官员不过在虚张声势，并且还会乐观的继续借贷业务。 来自互联网

8 anarchist   

n.无政府主义者

参考例句：

• You must be an anarchist at heart.你在心底肯定是个无政府主义者。
• I did my best to comfort them and assure them I was not an anarchist.我尽量安抚他们并让它们明白我并不是一个无政府主义者。

9 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

10 credible   

adj.可信任的，可靠的

参考例句：

• The news report is hardly credible.这则新闻报道令人难以置信。
• Is there a credible alternative to the nuclear deterrent?是否有可以取代核威慑力量的可靠办法？

11 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

12 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。

13 statistical   

adj.统计的，统计学的

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table.他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• They're making detailed statistical analysis.他们正在做具体的统计分析。

14 legitimacy   

n.合法，正当

参考例句：

• The newspaper was directly challenging the government's legitimacy.报纸直接质疑政府的合法性。
• Managing from the top down,we operate with full legitimacy.我们进行由上而下的管理有充分的合法性。