> That is literally what the article describes, though, in Papua New Guinea.

No it doesn't. It says the UN came up with a different estimate, which the UN wound up not adopting. There is no evidence that the UN estimate actually used better methods.

> I do think the headline exaggerates, I doubt "a lot" are fake, but some do seem to be.

I am strictly arguing against "a lot" being fake, and specifically that an isolated example is not evidence of "a lot."

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crazygringo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> There is no evidence that the UN estimate actually used better methods.

The article certainly argues that the UN used better methods. Do you have evidence to the contrary? See:

> So the 2022 population estimate was an extrapolation from the 2000 census, and the number that the PNG government arrived at was 9.4 million. But this, even the PNG government would admit, was a hazy guess... It’s not a country where you can send people to survey the countryside with much ease. And so the PNG government really had no idea how many people lived in the country.

> Late in 2022, word leaked of a report that the UN had commissioned. The report found that PNG’s population was not 9.4 million people, as the government maintained, but closer to 17 million people—roughly double the official number. Researchers had used satellite imagery and household surveys to find that the population in rural areas had been dramatically undercounted.

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jjk166 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The article argues, but does not provide evidence. It specifically says the UN used surveys immediately after saying surveys don't work here. There's no validation that estimates from satellite imagery are better than the methods PNG used.

The fact the UN didn't adopt this report would certainly be an argument against it.

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crazygringo 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's an article, not a 20 page research analysis. It provides detail aappropriate to its scope.

If you disagree, it's up to you to provide additional evidence to the contrary. The article devotes a paragraph on why the UN didn't release the report. If you want to argue that the UN shelved it for reasons of accuracy rather than for political reasons, please provide the explanation for why the article is wrong and why you're right.

I mean, maybe you're right. I certainly don't know. But the article is going into a degree of depth to defend its reporting, and you're not.

	▲	jjk166 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> It's an article, not a 20 page research analysis. It provides detail aappropriate to its scope. And if it merely cited the 20 page research analysis someone else did, that would be fine, but it doesn't. The article also is rather disingenuous, leaving out a lot of context. Looking closer, this was not some isolated UN estimate. Instead the UN was generating estimates every year, and the 2022 study was conducted differently because of covid. Subsequent UN estimates also went back to the original numbers. Also it wasn't a report that was buried, the numbers were released in 2022, they were revised down in 2023 after the UN conducted its next study. Seems like quite the omission. > If you disagree, it's up to you to provide additional evidence to the contrary, not just arguments. While arguments presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, sure here's the CIA estimate for the population which is in close agreement with both PNG's internal estimate and the actually adopted UN estimate. While the CIA is hardly the ultimate source of truth, the arguments that PNG pressured the UN to change its estimates for its own internal political reasons can't possibly explain the CIA coming to the same conclusion. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/archives/2023/c... > The article devotes a paragraph on why the UN didn't release the report. The article spends a paragraph insinuating an ulterior motive while giving no evidence it is anything other than pure speculation. > But the article is going into depth to defend its reporting, and you're not. The article throws claims against the wall. It is obliged to defend them and it fails. That I can find contradictory evidence with a 30 second google search is convenient but irrelevant. Even if would take a year of extensive research to refute the claim, it does not change the fact the claim was never supported to begin with.

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stickfigure 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The author brought up more examples besides PNG:

* Afghanistan

* Nigeria

* Congo

* South Sudan

* Eritrea

* Chad

* Somalia

* South Africa

Enough that "a lot" seems to be a fair characterization.

Also - while he implies this, I think it's important to mention explicitly - there's obvious fakery in the number of significant digits. If the numbers are approximations to the nearest ten million (or worse), it's a form of scientific fraud to provide a number like "94.9 million".

	▲	jjk166 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The only one of those that is an example is Nigeria. All the others are just listed as examples of countries that have not conducted a census in an extremely long time. While that's a good reason to think the numbers are probably inaccurate, it's not a good reason to think they are fake. > there's obvious fakery in the number of significant digits. If the numbers are approximations to the nearest ten million (or worse), it's a form of scientific fraud to provide a number like "94.9 million" The numbers aren't approximations to the nearest ten million. Just because they're inaccurate doesn't mean they're imprecise. For comparison if my bank statement is missing a large transaction it may be off the true value by hundreds of dollars, but that doesn't mean they didn't count the cents for the transactions they're aware of.