I once heard a great analogous story:

I once heard a great analogous story:

"A drunk man is searching on his hands and knees on the side of a road. A cop comes and asks him what he is doing. He says he is looking for his keys. The cop asks him where he thinks he dropped them. The man says - on the other side of the street. The cops asks him, "Why are you looking here", to which the man replies, "because the light is better here".

This is a fundamental problem with modern science and especially large scale measurement. Quantification like that can only come from what can be measured. We want to understand a whole society through a one-liner.