Issue 118 is now online, available as open access. Below is the editorial.

This is the second post-2017 Edinburgh Conference Issue. Anyway,
I/we think that most of the 60+ participants enjoyed and profited from
the Conference.

We have been waiting for the papers from that February Conference
for four months and have only received two; so we have decided to
publish an issue with those two and including our backlog of
submitted papers, and make the next issue the 2017 Conference
papers.

The first Conference paper is by Professor Cathcart on the low level of
trust in journalists in the UK, reviewing a wide range of disparate and
fragmentary survey evidence over several years finding no particular
trend; and comparing with levels of trust in journalists in other
European countries. The levels of trust do not appear to respond to
any specific political event; the most likely explanation is that the
public do not trust journalists because they have seen them not telling
the truth.

The second Conference paper is by Michael Dougan reviewing the
‘research’ that was meant to back up the claims of the Leave alliance
in its deceitful campaign about the Brexit referendum. He focuses on
the mysterious ‘statistical’ so-called arguments they put forward; and
shows that there was no basis to any of their evidence.

Then there is another poem by Larry Lesser – this time on a ‘Test for
Normality’ – whilst we have retained his original poem from the last
issue on the cover page. He has also provided a rare political
statistical joke.

We end with the second paper by John Read on the historical analysis
of UK population data focussing on trends in mortality rates. He
carries out a thorough analysis and suggests that the evidence shows
that the population pyramid is stabilising.

Once again, I have to make an appeal for papers – we are down to only
one, apart from outstanding Edinburgh Conference papers – or are we
simply running into a technology trap?

Roy Carr-Hill
Radical Statistics Editor