The truth… or how things can be untrue

Data veracity is a concept where we define the degree to which data corresponds to the true values. It comes from the metrological concept of “measurement trueness”, which is the degree to which the measurement quantifies the value correctly.

Well, that sounds very simple, but it is in fact quite complex. In our previous work, we scrutinized what it means to have veracious data in transport systems (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7535482). It turns out that “lying” is not the only option here.

In this book, the author looks into the way how things can be untrue. Sometimes deliberately by lying, sometimes by mistake. Sometimes, as we learn in the last chapter (with Brazilian aardvark), a mistake can actually end up being accepted as truth over time.

I recommend the book as it is written in a fantastic manner, providing examples from the real world (e.g. the alleged drone sightings over Gatwick in 2018). It even goes a bit further and discusses the need of replication of studies and that we should get more funding for making the scientific results more solid and robust.

Author: Miroslaw Staron

I’m professor in Software Engineering at IT faculty. I usually blog about interesting articles (for me) and my own reflections on the development of Software Engineering, AI, computer science and automotive software.