Statistics can be relied upon to a certain degree, but it really depends on where the stats are coming from, are they coming from a reliable source, or from a friend of a friend of a friend?
Most statistics are made up from a small survey of people, for example viewers who watched a particular show.
The actual number of people that watched the show may be 20,000, but these are only the people who have the equipment attached to their tv set to show what they watched and when so to get a realistic figure they may count each person as 1,000 to get a more realistic figure.
In actual fact everyone else may have been watching something else.