Holiday phrenology regional quant

Posted on LinkedIn 17th-Sep-2026.

Would you like some holiday + phrenology + how we use quant in regional analysis thoughts? Excellent.

We're on holiday this week - well, kind of. Our Wye Valley caravan plan went awry when a taxi totalled our parked tow-car (along with two other vehicles - no-one hurt, phew). So instead we've been (1) doing some lovely new-car-search tourism in Oldham and Stoke-on-Trent and (2) making little regional day trips.

On a Hebden Bridge outing, we discovered Valley Antiques and found the amazing L.N. Fowler phrenology head in the pics. It had to come home with us. My favourite headbump: "Sense of the Terrific."

The inscription on the back reads:

"For thirty years I have studied Crania and living heads from all parts of the world, and have found in every instance that there is a perfect correspondence between the conformation of the healthy skull of an individual and his known characteristics. To make my observations available I have prepared a bust of superior form and marked the divisions of the Organs in accordance with my research and varied experience."

In every instance a perfect correspondence? That's a hell of a strong scientific claim! (There's a great story about Mark Twain turning up twice to be tested by Fowler - once anonymously, finding "a cavity where his humour ought to be" and once as himself: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/facing-a-bumpy-history-144497373/ )

This will seem like an obvious point - saying "this is scientific" doesn't make it so. The science lives in the systems that check claims. But it's always happened, and it still happens. Example: Channel 4's recent 'ADHD myth' documentary claimed it was 'led by science'. Reader, it was not: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-the-tv-show-the-great-adhd-myth/

But this doesn't have to be about moustache-twirling snake oil salespeople (though that exists too). We can try in good faith to understand the world, and just get it wrong. Early phrenology was like this. Despite leading to some unsavoury places, it did help to kick off understanding of cortical localisation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19892113/

Segue to regions! Quant analysis tends to have an aura of robustness that it doesn't always warrant, any more than phrenology did. Again - saying "this is robust" does not make it so. While working in good faith, we have to keep on testing what we think we know, not allow numbers as a shortcut to thinking, and try to avoid "these make us look great!" numbers escaping into the wild unchecked. (Several horror stories about that...)

Those of us working on the numbers are in a position of trust here. But it shouldn't just be down to individuals, and it can't be "just peer review". In our own regions, we need build those trust systems across everyone who uses them. As to how we do that...?