Jack Shafer explains how the US Government estimated that there are 800,000 people being traffic across international borders each year. The Government Accountability Office says that the numbers are suspect and probably too high.
I have two ideas that I have been kicking around to fix issues like this. First, I think government should be generally more transparent. If the government conducted these studies more like academia, then the public would have an easier time review the numbers. Second, I think numbers like this should be generated by politically neutral parts of the government. The GAO seems like a good example of an office that is not political. It would be nice if all numbers and studies were as reliable as those that come from the GAO seem to be.
