Scientists attack ban on adding ‘noise’ to U.S. census data and many surveys

Scientists attack ban on adding ‘noise’ to U.S. census data and many surveys

Among the many unfounded claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump is his assertion that the 2020 census was biased toward Democrats. Although the criticism has barely registered with the public, scientists who work with federal statistical data are sounding the alarm on Trump’s proposed solution, which they see as the latest example of his administration’s efforts to politicize science.

“I realize that many of us have ‘outrage fatigue,’ but this particular outrage hits extremely close to home for the computer science theory community,” wrote Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, in a recent blog post.