Beware false prophets of data

August 09, 2020

In mid-July, president Trump ordered hospitals around the nation to stop sending COVID-19 data to the CDC and start sending it to Palantir, the private data firm co-founded by Peter Thiel. Since that time, I've noticed something interesting in the data that's been reported. Cases, which had been tending sharply upwards prior to the switch, suddenly started dropping. Meanwhile, every time I've checked, the number of new deaths had been tending upward. (It's worth noting that while the 14-day average for deaths is up, the 7-day average is down, so there was apparently a spike in between and we'll have to see where it goes from here. Downward, hopefully.)

The questionably nature of the number of positive cases reversing trend just as the data was wrested from the public entity over to a private one, is obvious. Given the often asymptomatic or moderately symptomatic nature of the disease, and the massive, diffuse caseload, it would seem quite easy to tinker with totals (at least on the margins).But it's a bit harder to hide deaths, at least ones in which the virus was confirmed.

That said, it's certainly possible that these figures are accurate representations. People may be changing behaviors in the face of growing caseloads, and thereby helping reduce transmission, but that doesn't seem to be the case from what I've been reading. And it's also possible that the number of deaths is up due to factors like at risk populations being infected or high caseloads overwhelming hospitals. So I'm not making any claims here, but I think this is worth keeping an eye on.

While digging for this post, I ran across something interesting. "Palantir“ comes from Tolkien's writing. They were stones that people used to see other parts of the world. They were basically web-based spy cams of supernatural nature. Here's an interesting nugget.

A major theme of palantír usage is that while the stones show real objects or events, they are an unreliable guide to action, and it is often unclear whether events are past or future: what is not shown may be more important than what is selectively presented. Further, users with sufficient power can choose what to show and what to conceal: in The Lord of the Rings, all uses of palantíri influence the action through deception or misreading of what is shown. 

Source

This quote comes from Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt, but I found multiple references around the web that suggested the same. Sauron's use of such apparently led him to multiple missteps and his eventual downfall.

I think it's interesting that Peter Thiel would take the name of a deceptive mechanism for insight as the name of his data analytics firm.