Database construction requires biased selection decisions, so raw data never exists.

Evidence

Though the field of media studies has been slow to utilize digital tools in comparison to other fields, there is a growing body of work demonstrating the value of supplementing traditional methods with digital affordances. Spanning from historical data-mining to shot-counting to visualizing international distribution flows, the content of these projects ranges widely, but most are rooted in the scale that database technology provides. … However, before a database can be assembled, difficult and inevitably biased decisions must be made about the content of the database, for as Lisa Gitelman’s elegant book title asserts, “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 324

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s methodological question about whether financial structure causation is demonstrated or just correlated — Gitelman’s point about data framing echoes the problem of cherry-picking evidence for causal claims. — connects to: Industrial selection leaves no uncorrupted group to correct errors — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 412
• CANDY: The pun title ‘Raw Data Is an Oxymoron’ is a light, shareable tidbit on its own.