Out of the box.

Readers ask what I meant in my previous column by saying: ‘The basis for all organised human activity, whether governing a country, changing a job or undertaking a randomised controlled trial, is not facts. It is ideas that drive us’. As with politics or employment, so it is with public health nutrition. Here’s how the philosopher of science Steve Fuller makes the point: ‘The most salient feature of the scientific enterprise is that it is theory-driveny Scientists begin with a certain view of the world, which they then test against the evidence, in light of which their view is then revised and extended accordingly’. This does not mean that ideas, or systems of ideas – ideologies – are good, or are more reliable than facts. It is simply that ideas come first. The ability to have ideas is a defining characteristic of humans. This is how we work: we don’t see data, we see shapes, we make patterns, like every time we ‘see’ a far-off post or shadow as a person until we come closer. Often the more powerful the idea the more likely it is to sink below consciousness. Ideas are not truths. They work if they are useful. They are tested and may be overturned by the organised experiences and observations we call ‘facts’. Don’t imagine that facts are truths. That’s a bad idea. Indeed, it may be a smart idea to put ‘truth’ in a box labelled ‘religion’. Rather than continue to bombard you with aphorisms, in this column I give a couple of examples of ideas that drive conventional thinking and ordinary science, but that turn out to fly in the face of facts.