The market for information and statistics There are market based statistics-producers in developed countries. The market agents are ready to pay a price in order to acquire such statistics. The producers of statistics conduct frequent market surveys, analyse results, supply them on line at a price and help market agents to create wealth. Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka, we do not have such market based statistics-producers. The collection and analysis of vital data that are useful to market agents are being done by a few governmental organisations. Like any other product supplied by the government, such data are also supplied as a public good free of charge. Even when the governmental agencies could sell statistics at a price, they do not venture to do so, because they are guided by such principles as “doing utmost benefit” to people as a social service. The country too, therefore, expects free goods from these governmental organisations. But this creates a problem known as “the agent-principal problem” in economics. The agent-principal problem The agent-principal problem is typical to any government service. It says that the agent who is a government bureau or a department or even a university does not have incentive to produce its output at its best. The principal who is the user of the service, on the other hand, is scattered and not in a position to influence the agent to improve quality.
The types of misuse of statistics listed by Wikipedia are as follows:  2  BIS Review 36/2009  •  First, the statistician may discard the unfavourable data and make use only what is favourable for him to prove his point. •  Second, in field surveys, the statistician may ask loaded questions in order to elicit an answer of his choice. •  Third, the statistician may tend to over-generalise facts and make wrong conclusions. •  Fourth, the samples used may be biased. •  Fifth, the causality outlined may be fallacious. •  Sixth, the data may have been manipulated in order to show a result favourable to some interested party. •  Seventh, data may be dredged or mined in order to find a correlation that would not be there. How to gain credibility for statistics? All these instances of the misuse of statistics make the statistics less reliable and suspicious. The governmental statistical agencies throughout the globe are criticised by public on this ground. Once the organisations lose credibility regarding the compilation of statistics, it would be very hard to regain trust and confidence of users. The statistical bureaus run by former Soviet Union and its satellite states have been subject to this criticism. The way to avoid this criticism is to adopt global best practices with regard to compilation and dissemination of statistics. It requires countries to adopt a code of ethics and practices when it comes to dissemination of information.