Opinion: Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner puts crucial health data at risk

In early July, I began teaching a summer course: introductory biostatistics for an accelerated master’s of public health program. Most of the students are clinicians, and biostatistics is (understandably) not often the favorite course. On day one, I told them that one measure of the power of statistics is the way unscrupulous leaders attempt to shut them down when they do not like what the data reveal.

That lesson has taken a new significance recently, when President Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, after her agency released monthly jobs data that he found unfavorable.

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