“It's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don't have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it's too late” read the text message that was sent to 1,750 state workers through the state’s emergency management system last month.

Poet Maya Angelou once said, “if you don’t like something, change it…” and that’s exactly what data scientist Rebekah Jones did. Dissatisfied with the way the Department of Health in the state of Florida was reporting Covid-19 statistics - Jones created her own dashboard to accurately depict infection and death rates in her state.

The United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado recently announced their new Data Science major for incoming cadets as of June 4^th. In a press release from the academy, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein stated, “It’s not enough to have more data than our adversaries. It’s how we understand the information and use it at the speed of relevance that matters.”

As the world turns to data to solve some of the world’s most perplexing problems – data science has been thrust into the spotlight. Data is manipulated, shifted, and placed into different combinations that produce results, theories, and predictions. In the past, data has been challenged and criticized for the benefit of science to guarantee that the calculations and statistics are correct.  But as governments are heightened amid Covid-19 and governments are anxious to restart the economy – data scientists in the United States are under pressure to produce positive results that show declining infection rates – even if it’s not accurate.