[jamesw6811]

There is a pretty big difference in your two examples. Models of bosons behave in a predictable way. I can think of several likely reasons that reports of use-of-force incidents would not correlate directly with actual use-of-force.

As a result, in a study or a journalistic write-up of said study, I wouldn't jump to the shorthand of "tracked use-of-force incidents" as opposed to "reports of use-of-force incidents".

Just because something is the best way of measuring a quantity we currently have doesn't mean it is good enough to equate the measurement with the quantity in shorthand.

[dpark]

I think the examples track pretty well. You could say that body cameras somehow cause a rise and reporting that exactly offsets the reduction in violence, but that’s not even wild conjecture. It’s worse. It’s inventing factors to make the data fit, factors that are by definition not measurable. Whatever we measure, it’s possible to invent a factor that makes the measurement completely wrong.

Scientists could similarly argue that there is another particle that only shows up when we measure that happens to look exactly like the Higgs boson in every way we can measure. But then everyone would call bullshit.

Again, if there are better/other things to measure, that’s legitimate criticism. Simply inventing factors that make the valid measurements null and declaring it impossible to actually measure isn’t.

[BugsJustFindMe]

Measure what you can measure. Claim what you can claim. Don't claim what you can't claim based on what you measured. We're not talking about counting photons here. We're talking about human selective self-reporting under different circumstances. Understand the chasm between those things.