Palantir's Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy now working for the data-analytics firm, publicly lectured MP Clive Lewis on the need for accuracy when citing NHS figures. Watson accused Lewis of selecting data to suit an argument, presenting himself as a stickler for statistical rigour.
Yet, as The Register reports, Watson's own challenge skipped the warnings attached to the same NHS numbers. By omitting those caveats, he committed the very sin he attributed to Lewis, undercutting his point about careful data use.
The exchange is a small but telling example of how data analytics advocates can present statistics without full context. For public-sector deployments of such tools, the episode highlights why provenance and footnotes matter as much as the numbers themselves.