If you can walk up the side of a three-storey building wearing only calfskin gloves and socks before the age of 20 you will live at least until age 150. A great deal of research makes analogous claims: alleviating the poverty of orphaned African girls will improve their health and longevity.
Much research seems entirely divorced from the realities of life: life is complex, fuzzy, stochastic and the problems we have to solve are wicked. There are many silver bullets; there just don’t seem to be any vampires; or more simply: there are many hammers and most things are not nails.
“Limitations of this study…. The results of this study cannot be generalised….”
We generate googols of information that is unrelated to action. We need to learn some discrimination before we expend our resources.
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