One of the easiest mistakes in science is to confuse a single measurement with the whole reality.
We do it all the time. An investor watches a stock price and forgets that the ticker is not the company. A person steps on a scale and begins to believe the number is their health. A physician measures cholesterol, glucose, or blood pressure and gradually starts treating the number rather than the person. The measurement, once a useful clue, slowly becomes a substitute for the living system it was meant to describe. The map begins to replace the country.
Every scientific field…
