Edge has a wonderful article about statistics:
… statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the “logic of science”; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology [and epidemiology MW]; you can’t be a modern intellectual and not think probabilistically—but… let’s not be suckers. The problem is much more complicated than it seems to the casual, mechanistic user who picked it up in graduate school. Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now …
No it’s not the logic of science – it’s just one of many methods that is fooling many people in particular genetic epidemiologists, yea, yea.