Not Everything that Counts Can be Counted
On statistical stage, indicators have become a choice, and when their ambition is to measure aspects of intangible nature, they are often subject to heated debate. At European level, the history and setbacks of the development of a safety indicator in a risk area (air navigation control) shows the epistemic (what can be measured or quantified ?) and political (under what conditions can we make the statistics figures public ?) difficulties, related to a goal (Aviation Safety), which is the purpose of inspection bodies in air navigation. In the tradition of the sociology of statistics of Alain Desrosières, we analyze the research history of agreement on the conventions, which becomes that of a waiver to quantify (not everything that counts can be counted ...) and so doing we propose to open a history of failure, renunciation, and resistance to quantification.