The source of information matters. This is doubly true for statistical claims since:<p>* statistics are often counter-intuitive,<p>* they are easy to manipulate or misinterpret,<p>* manipulation requires significant effort to discover,<p>* they are sometimes correct in form but the data is biased,<p>* bias in the data might have been mentioned by the initial data collectors but the analyzers may omit it (either intentionally or accidentally).