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  3. [A] In theory, statistics should help settle arguments. They ought to provide stable reference points that everyone—no matter wh

[A] In theory, statistics should help settle arguments. They ought to provide stable reference points that everyone—no matter wh

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问题     [A] In theory, statistics should help settle arguments. They ought to provide stable reference points that everyone—no matter what their politics—can agree on. Yet in recent years, varying levels of trust in statistics has become one of the key disagreements that have opened up in western liberal democracies.
    [B] From one perspective, grounding politics in statistics is elitist, undemocratic and oblivious to people’s emotional investments in their community and nation. It is just one more way that privileged people in London, Washington DC or Brussels seek to impose their worldview on everybody else.
    [C] But statistics arouse quite the opposite reaction. People assume that the numbers are manipulated and dislike the elitism of resorting to quantitative evidence. Presented with official estimates of how many immigrants are in the country illegally, a common response is to mock. Far from increasing support for immigration, British Future found, pointing to its positive effect on GDP can actually make people more hostile to it. GDP itself has come to seem like a Trojan horse for an elitist liberal agenda. Sensing this, politicians have now largely abandoned discussing immigration in economic terms.
    [D] From the opposite perspective, statistics are quite the opposite of elitist. They enable journalists, citizens and politicians to discuss society as a whole, not on the basis of anecdote, sentiment or prejudice, but in ways that can be validated. The alternative to quantitative expertise is less likely to be democracy than an unleashing of tabloid editors and politicians to provide their own "truth" of what is going on across society.
    [E] This is an unwelcome dilemma. Either the state continues to make claims that it believes to be valid and is accused by skeptics of propaganda, or else, politicians and officials are confined to saying what feels plausible and intuitively true, but may ultimately be inaccurate. Either way, politics becomes swamp in accusations of lies and cover-ups. The declining authority of statistics—and the experts who analyse them—is at the heart of the crisis that has become known as "post-truth" politics. And in this uncertain new world, attitudes towards quantitative expertise have become increasingly divided.
    [F]  All of this presents a serious challenge for liberal democracy. Put bluntly, the British government—its officials, experts, advisers and many of its politicians—does believe that immigration is on balance good for the economy. The British government did believe that Brexit was the wrong choice. The problem is that the government is now engaged in self-censorship, for fear of provoking people further.
    [G] Nowhere is this more vividly manifest than with immigration. The thinktank British Future has studied how best to win arguments in favour of immigration and multiculturalism. One of its main findings is that people often respond warmly to qualitative evidence, such as the stories of individual migrants and photographs of diverse communities.
    A→【B1】→【B2】→【B3】→E→【B4】→【B5】
【B2】
选项
答案 C
解析 第二段内容是对首段的论据支持——对统计数据信任程度的不同已成为西方自由民主国家出现的主要分歧之一，结尾处作者说明定性的证据比较容易让大家接受。接下来可以预测，既然是“分歧”，有支持的一方，就有反对的一方。[C]段首句“但统计数据却激起了截然不同的反应(But statistics arouse quite the opposite reaction)”，与第二段人们的态度相反，因此[C]为正确选项。
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