The idea for this book arose out of the Radical Statistics’ annual conference which was held in Bristol in February 1998. The conference, on tackling inequalities, attracted a record audience and, disappointingly, numbers were such that people were turned away. For this reason we decided to publish the contributions plus other contributions on the theme.

Radical Statistics

Radical Statistics is a group of statisticians and others who share a common concern about the political assumptions implicit in the process of compiling and using statistics and an awareness of the actual and potential misuse of statistics and its techniques. In particular, we are concerned about the:

• • mystifying use of technical language used to disguise social problems as technical problems;

• • lack of control by the community over the aims of statistical investigations, the way these are conducted and the use of the information produced;

• • power structures within which statistical workers are employed and which control their work and the uses to which it is put;

• • fragmentation of statistical questions into separate specialist fields in ways that can obscure common problems.

Our history

Radical Statistics was formed in January 1975 and is proud to have been a part of the radical science movement. This movement dates back to before the Second World War. Its most influential expression was in J.D. Bernal's book, The social function of science (1939). This argued that science was the motor of human progress and history. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other events led to the disillusionment and eventual collapse of this pre-war movement. Some years later, in 1969, involvement in the anti-Vietnam war campaigns led a new generation of young radical scientists to found the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS).

The idea that statistics can be used as a tool for social change has a much longer history and lay behind statistical developments in the mid-19th century. Some of these ideas surfaced anew in the 1970s in the form of a heightened interest in social statistics in general and social indicators in particular. Radical Statistics rejected the idea that statistics were solely for measuring the ‘economic’ well-being of the State. We felt that statistics should and could be used for ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’ purposes. Statistics should be used to identify ‘social’ needs and to underpin rational planning to eliminate these needs.