I can’t be certain, but I think this passage from Bryson might have had something to do with the wizard’s rant last week about how education is too often “a deepening of the status quo.” James Lind clearly discovered the cure for scurvy, but refused to accept it, clinging instead to the traditional wisdom of his day. Andrew Lang (1844 – 1912) could easily have been speaking of Lind when he said,
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts – for support rather than illumination.”