I first saw it about 1979, when a computer model of a Copper-Zinc mine was used to justify taxation levels to make it unprofitable.
The legislature of Wisconsin believed the model, passed the taxes, and the Crandon mine was never developed.
Later, I found an error in the model. It was one character which treated a cost as income, a change from a negative to a positive.
The entire model was invalidated.
Models are what corrupt academics use to push policy the way they want it to go.
A long quote that bears on this:
“ Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
That quote is from President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, the same one in which he warns of the military industrial complex, which the Left has bandied about regularly for the last 60 years.
In this passage above, we see he also warns of government / big science in a similar way. We are seeing today what he warned of then with the whole Global Warming / Climate Change shtick (“we can fix the weather if you let us tax and control you heavily”).
The pandemic response is perhaps similar. Does anyone really think Fauci and Brix are the be-all and end-all on wisdom on this event? Yet they have heavily, likely much too heavily, influenced events.
Using models like they use polls. Both methods have this in common: tell me the result you want and I’ll produce it.