“Data science” and “data journalism” are mostly fake, at least in politics - when you see an article with a bunch of convincing-looking bar graphs a natural reaction is “this guy brought the data he’s probably right” but the correct reaction is increased suspicion.

The vast majority of political data journalism is someone who is highly motivated and highly biased hunts for data they can use to “prove” whatever point they were already looking to make.

Maybe in sports data science is mostly sound because the motivation there is finding real edges - look at the data and figure out how to score more points. That isn’t how political data science works - political data science is “I want to create a bar chart that says centrism rules, because I’m a centrist, so time to find or manipulate data for that chart.”

Data journalism is your standard punditry except it comes off as more grounded in science because the guys doing it produce charts and wear bow ties. Sadly wearing a bow tie and using Excel isn’t actually science. The root of science is the search for the truth and the root of data science is the search for ammo.