Mark Kleiman renews his store of aphorisms:

The Reality-Based Community: Sad but true : At the drug policy meetings I picked up two aphorisms which I intend to steal shamelessly for the rest of my career. (The ground rules forbid me to name the authors unless/until I get explicit consent.) Though they were said about the drug-policy arena, they have much wider applications.

Does research influence policy? Certainly it does. Especially bad research.

Yes, it would be nice to have evidence-based policy-making. But even if we can't get that, perhaps we can do away with policy-based evidence-making.

Was it Oscar Wilde who, in response to "I wish I had said that," said: "You will, you will"?