How do you know the people they choose are even experts if they refuse to reveal who these people are? I understand the difference between bad data and unscientific data and to me that is a distinction without a difference. Unless we know who these people are and can clearly see the metrics they are using to objectively measure the level of democracy in these countries, then we are just believing their claims on faith. It is like if a poll of 10 "random" soda experts is published where they rank flavors of various drinks and Coke comes out on top, yet the authors of the poll fail to mention that 8 of them don't like the taste of lemon and 6 of them happen to work for Coca-Cola. That might be important information.