Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES

ALL models are wrong, but some are useful. This aphorism is generally attributed to a statistician in the 1970s, but its message is much older, and its truth is much more widely applicable than just to statistical models.
All representations of the world are “models,” that is, depictions of reality, or some aspect of it. They are “wrong” because they purposefully simplify reality — to make it comprehensible, or to extract a perspective through one particular lens.
When violence is inflicted on people by the powerful, they work very hard to control the story of what has happened. They offer an account of the world, a model, to describe what has happened on their terms.

A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Science has always been mixed up with money and power, but as a decorative facade for megayachts, it risks leaving reality behind altogether, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

