> At the risk of oversimplifying, here is a rough attempt to rank the information value of different sources or presentation modalities of information: 1) Raw data, numbers measured, prior to processing by authors

This reminds me of an anecdote about Darwin. A critic claimed that Darwin's book was too theoretical and that he should have just "put his facts before us and let them rest." He responded -- 

"About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. Observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!" 

In other words, data are just numbers until someone makes sense of them. "Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought." — Albert Szent-Gyoergi

PLB

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