Welcome to Axios Today, it's Friday, February 5th, I'm Nyla Boudou.

We're no stranger to stories about misinformation or deliberate disinformation.

We live in a world where now more than ever you have to be skeptical.

Is this news from a source I trust?

Who paid for the survey?

Is this number true?

And that skepticism can be healthy, but it also can be used to cast more doubt and misinformation

on data and statistics that are very real, which is why today we're dedicating our entire

episode to why people believe things that aren't true.

Tim Hartford is a senior columnist with the Financial Times.

He's also author of the Data Detective, which is just out this week.

Hi Tim, welcome to Axios Today.

Thank you very much for having me.

You're right that we might be at a bit of a fork in the road or a moment when it comes

to statistics, particularly when we think about the pandemic.

Yeah, I think so because we've seen a tremendous amount of misinformation,

but we've also seen an incredible appreciation of just how life-saving accurate numbers can be.

So all of the questions we want answering, like where is the virus?

Who's got it? How's it spreading?

Do the vaccines work?

All of these life or death questions, you can't answer any of them without good data.

And so I think people have started to appreciate that while there is a lot of polarization,

...