When relevance becomes confirmation

'That is so. But your question, Anstey, exhibits the difference between the legal and the scientific outlook. The lawyer's investigations tend to proceed along the line of information wanted: the scientists tend to proceed along the line of information available. The business of the man of science is impartially to acquire all the knowledge that is obtainable; the lawyer tends to concern himself only with that which is material to the issue.'

R. Austin Freeman - The Cat's Eye (1923)

It’s an interesting quote this – yet another angle on what we already know. The legal approach of eliciting the line of information wanted is one reason why both bureaucracies and legislatures are so poor when it comes to gathering objectively relevant information. That which is material to the issue depends on whatever the issue is presumed to be. Everything else is screened out.

Today we might call it confirmation bias but we tend to apply it to individuals rather than government. Somehow we expect governments to be pragmatic behind the façade. Yet this is where the real damage is done – behind the government façade where relevance becomes confirmation and disconfirmation is irrelevant.

Objectivity is lost and some degree of policy failure becomes inevitable. Yet failure doesn’t always matter to those responsible because still the legal approach is followed – defend or deny failure by sticking to the line of information wanted.

Carstairs - how do we wriggle out of this one?
The usual approach Minister – stick to the official line.

There is no way round this endemic weakness as legislatures are rarely designed to attract people engaged in making something work in the real world. This requires pragmatic experience rarely found in those who embark on a political or bureaucratic career early in life. What we get from these people is the line of information wanted and it doesn’t work. The real world cannot be made to work merely by throwing words at it, however well crafted.

Even where objectivity is supposedly valued there are familiar problems. Science, engineering and construction don’t mix well with government bureaucracy for example. The legalistic approach subverts technical relevance and attracts ambition rather than competence. Again and again the line of information wanted supplants the line of information available wherever the greasy pole and prestige are career drivers. Policy-driven evidence usurps evidence-driven policy.

There is a similar problem with voters who lack experience of the real world. This level of experience is not acquired by the age of eighteen. The voting age is clearly far too low. The minimum age for MPs is clearly far too low. Take Jeremy Corbyn for example. He hasn’t mastered the role at 71.