[whatshisface]

Your job when analysing data is simply to enumerate the possibilities and assign likelihoods to them if possible. If two models fit equally well, you're supposed to write them both down in the hope that someone will collect further data to distinguish between them.

If you're cutting holes in your report for political reasons, that's just not doing the job. That's what pundits are paid to do, not (ideally at least) scientists. Fraud is easy to commit, and the fact that it's possible is not that hard of a philosophical issue.

[chii]

How do you tell that a paper containing conclusions to support an agenda is written with correct scientific rigor, rather than fraud? Using Simpson's paradox, one can obfuscate their biases by making the desired conclusion drop out of the data.