A new study has gotten an insane amount of attention among conservative and alt-right Galaxy Brains (guaranteed to be featured by Tucker Carlson) because of the sensational clickbaity finding that the number of illegal immigrants in the US may have been underestimated by 50-100%:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0201193

There's just one problem: from a truthseeking perspective, it is a pile of hot garbage, which is apparent just from the abstract but becomes even more clear when you read the paper. One might argue that it is methodologically sound, but the assumptions they make--and their approach to using the data--are so severely flawed that it is somewhat surprising to me that they were published in the first place. One of the critical flaws is related to a major problem with the UK's approach to estimating immigration, which I described in the Brexit thread: they don't adequately account for significant changes in patterns of migration over time, eg. high rates of circular migration during some periods.

Some of the peer reviewers for the article wrote a detailed response, and their criticism is summarized here:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news...nnot-be-hidden

Extremely disappointing. The study adds little to our knowledge, other than reminding us once again of GIGO. And its harmful impact is likely to be considerable--there are certain people who are already inclined to overestimate the number of illegal immigrants, Muslims, etc. in their countries by an order of magnitude. These people, who tend to dismiss decent scientific work, will see this paper as vindication--and their delusional beliefs will be further strengthened.