Data facts and fiction | Letter

In his long read on the Institute for Fiscal Studies (15 March) Simon Akam quotes Paul Johnson, its director: "It's the data that is doing the talking." This sounds dangerously like newspeak for that old canard "the facts speak for themselves". In 1961, the historian EH Carr wrote: "The facts speak only when the historian " decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context " It was, I think, one of Pirandello's characters who said that a fact is like a sack - it won't stand up till you put something in it."

What the father in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author actually says is: "A sack won't stand up when it's empty " To make it stand up it has to be filled with the reasons and the feelings that caused it." Or to put it most succinctly, "No fact without theory".