“People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly… unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn?”
This from Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, which I’m reading (actually listening to) along with seemingly half the western world. He makes the point about the tools directly at hand in a context that is unrelated to science. Still, I think it nicely sums up the situation with nutrition research, and particularly the observational epidemiology as vigorously defended in this recent BMJ analysis.