A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler's "big lie"; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you. — Darrell Huff

"Does it make sense?" will often cut a statistic down to size when the whole rigmarole is based on an unproven assumption.

Even if you can't find a source of demonstrable bias, allow yourself some degree of skepticism about the results as long as there is a possibility of bias somewhere. There always is.

There is terror in numbers. [...] Perhaps we suffer from a trauma induced by grade-school arithmetic.