How reliable is the data used to make decisions?

When making decisions, data reliability is a risk.  

We are bombarded with “facts”, “studies”, “expert opinions” and other influences which polarize us and put us at risk when we make poor decisions, especially when we are accountable for the outcomes.

This has never been more so than in our current polarized times when “we go low” seems to be the preferred communication method to accumulate the power to influence decisions globally.

On this website, we are focused on being methodical, logical and reasoned.  We do not play political, cultural, religious or any other favourites.  

What we care about is using the best scientific and commercially available data to accelerate our global economy to an operating space within the biosphere’s boundaries.  

This requires policy makers, regulators, financiers, multinational corporations, investors, business operators, influencers of all shapes and the general public to have access to reliable data and be able to know when there is a significant shift in our knowledge.  

To this end, we have created an index score for reliability of data. BIRI, the Bio-spheric Information Reliability Index, is a score from 0 to 10.   10 being the most reliable data publicly available.

The BIRI score is applied to the main URL of a publisher of information.

There are a few principles informing the BIRI index:

1.      Those with the highest risk related to incorrect or incomplete data, have a higher duty of care and will be more likely to publish higher quality data.

2.      Those with rigorous internal processes which are free from career advancement or other forms of compensation are likely to publish higher quality data.

3.      Those with a legal liability exposure for publishing false or misleading information are generally likely to publish higher quality data.

4.      Those who have historically and consistently published misleading, erroneous, politically influenced or poor quality data are likely to do this again and hence any future data produced should be downgraded.

5.      Media, NGOs and influencers rely on funding to survive.  Their ability to provide unbiased data is poor.

6.      From time to time, organizations will issue information of poor quality.  Where there is a system to review data and retracted it, there should be no change to the BIRI score.

7.      Changes in leadership, ownership, administration and senior staff, can affect data quality. Such events should be considered in the maintenance of a BIRI score.

8.      Where organizations present data derived from lower quality sources, the BIRI score will remain unchanged

9.      Where organizations present data as fact from a lower quality score, the BIRI score should be downgraded to the source BIRI score.

10.  Data published on sub websites or related entities will have a separate BIRI score.

The score is typically edited every 6 months unless a major event occurs.

Scores of 4 and above are generally published and attributed to information used on this site.  A score of 4 is considered information which has a low reliability and could be sourced from the internet.  It is only used where a general introduction is not available on higher quality sites.  

Lower quality scored data are generally not used or published.

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