When we get into discussions about policy, spending money, especially government money, and the outcomes from that spend, we as a nation are ill equipped to handle the facts. Not because the facts tell us thing we don't want to hear - that's another topic. But because the facts are not understandable by the general public.
This is No Way What So Ever a Denigration of the General Public, but rather that the complexity of everyday life have overtaken our ability to deal with them. Let's start with H. G. Wells
"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write." H.G.Wells
So here's an example of "everyday" life in the life of scientific based policy making that is likely lost of most of those needed to support the policy.
