Daily Inspiration Quote by Ronald Fisher

Fisher lands the jab with a pathologist’s calm: the statistician summoned too late can only pronounce time of death. The line is funny because it’s brutal and familiar - a scene in labs, boardrooms, and product teams where someone runs a messy trial, gets an ugly result, and then asks analytics to “make sense of it.” By framing statistics as a post mortem, Fisher mocks the idea that rigor can be retrofitted. You don’t get to sprinkle p-values on a confused design and call it knowledge.

The specific intent is disciplinary gatekeeping with a purpose. Fisher, one of the architects of modern experimental design, is defending the idea that statistics isn’t just calculation; it’s planning. Randomization, controls, sample size, pre-specified hypotheses - these are not bureaucratic niceties but the organs of the experiment. If you omit them, the body may still move, but it won’t live long enough to tell you anything trustworthy.

The subtext is also a warning about incentives. People consult statisticians late because early consultation forces uncomfortable commitments: defining success before you see the data, accepting that some questions can’t be answered cheaply, admitting uncertainty. Fisher’s autopsy metaphor implies something more damning than error: self-deception. The “cause of death” might be bias, confounding, or underpowering, but the real killer is the desire to keep options open until the story is convenient.

Historically, it’s Fisher taking aim at the pre-design era of ad hoc empiricism, pushing science toward a culture where method is not an afterthought but the experiment’s spine.