You are certainly right to warn that international rankings, such as the widely-cited United Nations Development Project’s Human Development Index or the World Bank’s influential Doing Business index, should be taken with a grain of salt (“Wrong Numbers,” January 8, 2011). As you point out, teachers have drilled generations of economics students in the limitations of economic statistics, while the politicians and the public give them undue weight. But you are certainly wrong in concluding that measurement provides more knowledge in the natural sciences, whereas in the humanities “more data sometimes yield less truth.” Of course, sometimes this is the case, but that is true both of the natural and social sciences. Otherwise, international rankings should be improved as much as possible in terms of both data collection and processing, but they should always be taken with a grain of salt. They are too useful to be abandoned just because they are not perfect, though.