Over the past few years we’ve been inundated with political catchphrases masquerading as unbiased policy which claim to be neutral because they ‘follow the science’. The idea behind the slogan was that – as with all mantras – if repeated regularly enough, people will come to believe it. When the public realised that ‘follow the science’ was only there to elevate baffling and often contradictory politicking to scriptural incontrovertibility, the spin doctors beefed up the linguistic illusion of credibility by adding the word ‘model’. Chanting this, they anticipated, would lead the public to eventually think: ‘well, if there’s a model involved, it must be true.’

As Erica Thompson says in her brilliant ‘Escape from Model Land’ (Basic Books, £20, ISBN 9781529364873), the problem with models is they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Readers of E&T will already know that the calibre of the mathematical model is only as good as the quality and completeness...