Commissions supplied interpretive frames that overrode contrary statistics.

Evidence

If statistics help “determine the character of social facts,” as Hacking contends, it is commissions that provide their interpretive, historical, and epistemic frames. Despite the figures—in some areas as many as 18 percent of the European population were living in poverty—many local reports argued that pauperism was less a problem than the commission had originally thought. Some local committees refused to acknowledge a problem at all. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 960

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages Hacking’s claim that statistics determine the character of social facts; archives Hacking against colonial practice.