Think tanks and political organizations (including government bodies, the UN and such) are more in the business of selling numbers, than reflecting reality accurately.
The problem is that most others don't have access to the infrastructure and raw data to get accurate numbers themselves (or redo the data collection with better methodology).
I don't have the link right now, but one of my favorite tales is a group of traders who called the bluff of both a pervasive incumbent government spouting all kinds of GDP fudging nonsense around the election cycle and a sprawling company who tends to work closely with and aggressively court rusted towns down on their luck as a source of cheap labor with dependent customers who are forced to rely on conditional subsidies that serve to keep labor in line during a growth hacking period to monopolize and export the company-town model requiring more negotiating leverage by leading shareholders with over-optimistic revenue guidance.
Of course, the story is more of a feel-good rationalization of fickle lottery tickets, due to the realism of "the market can be irrational longer than you can remain solvent" even if you're correct and especially due to the incentives involved to keep the insanity going as long as possible, bail out insiders, and conveniently backtrack on contracts due to concerns that actually losing money as a counter-party is not acceptable for the entrenched interests because the boogeyman of contagion would spread as the house of cards comes collapsing down with highly leveraged banks and pension funds unwinding the horrible bets they made that were rationalized by a feeling of untouchability when cozzying up with politicians.
But the details of the story are more interesting in that the methods used, such as realtime satellite based photography to more accurately estimate sales are definitely out of the current realm of accessible infrastructure and data collection methods for mere mortals who know in the back of their mind the stats are a ruse but can't possibly prove it.
The problem is that most others don't have access to the infrastructure and raw data to get accurate numbers themselves (or redo the data collection with better methodology).