1. “Working Numbers”—Introductory Remarks

See, e.g., Keyes (2004), Tallis (2016), The Economist (2016), Glasser (2016) and Pazzanese (2016).

Mance (2016).

Bradner (2017).

Oxford Dictionaries (2016).

Criticism of forms of a supposedly “rational politics”—while much less extreme—can also be found in more recent scientific literature on the subject; for example, the characterization of policy-making on the basis of scientific evidence as myth.

Good Morning Britain (2016).

This figure, which ignored the UK rebate and other factors, was described as “potentially misleading” by the UK Statistics Authority, and as “not sensible” by the Institute for Fiscal Studies; it was rejected in fact-checks by BBC News, Channel 4 News and Full Fact. See Dilont (2016), Emmerson et al. (2016), Reuben (2016) and Full Fact (2016).

http://​www.​politifact.​com/​.

Broder (2016).

See Remnick (2016). Barack Obama gave a powerful example of this whateverism when he said that “An explanation of climate change from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll”.

Shaw (2016).

That ethic corresponds to Karl Popper’s famous dictum that while scientific knowledge “consists in the search for truth”, it “is not the search for certainty”. Popper (2000 [1994]), 4.

See, e.g., Weber (2002 [1919]).

See, e.g., Weingart (1983).

Quotation from the following website: www.​coalition4eviden​ce.​org.

Leonhardt (2014).

Commission (2010).

See https://​twitter.​com/​mikebloomberg/​status/​4257384428035112​96?​lang=​en (21 January 2014). The quote is older and often (but without evidence) attributed to Peter Drucker, business consultant and author of numerous management books. See the statement on the website of the Drucker Institute: http://​www.​druckerinstitute​.​com/​2013/​07/​measurement-myopia/​.

A recent example can be found in economics, where a 2010 paper by economists Reinhart and Rogoff (2010) on the effects of national debt on growth had a large impact on economic policy. The magic number was a 90% debt to GDP ratio beyond which the economy would begin to decline. Several countries including the US, UK, France and Germany were close to this magic number at the time and discussion on fiscal policies were intense in the face of the 2009 crisis. The results of the paper were heavily cited by proponents of austerity policies in the US and Europe alike, e.g. by policy-makers in the UK, at the EU level and in the US. In 2013, a team of economists obtained the data from Reinhart and Rogoff and carried out a new analysis which uncovered flaws in the data and analysis. Once these errors were corrected the results changed and there was no evidence of a threshold at 90% of GDP (Herndon et al. 2014). The media coverage of the error discovery was massive. A summary of the controversy and the possible consequences for economics as a profession can be found here: Cassidy (2016).