3 ideas
Before judging a statistic, pause and name the feeling it provokes, whether delight, outrage, or defensiveness. Motivated reasoning makes people accept numbers that flatter their beliefs and pick apart numbers that threaten them, so the strength of your reaction signals that your judgment is compromised. Noticing the feeling creates a gap in which you can apply the same scrutiny to welcome and unwelcome claims.
Art forger Han van Meegeren sold crude fake Vermeers to leading experts, including Abraham Bredius, who badly wanted to find a missing religious period in Vermeer's work. Expertise gives no protection when desire drives the evaluation, and it may make things worse because experts are better at rationalizing what they want to believe.
Many statistical disputes are really disputes over definitions, since a number measures a category someone chose to draw. Before arguing about whether a figure is large or rising, ask precisely what was counted: which deaths count as 'infant', which births as 'premature', which incidents as 'self-harm'. Changes in definition or counting methods can produce apparent trends that have nothing to do with changes in the world.