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As I write this, London is empty for the summer. The streets are as clear as an ex-mayor's dreams and a sense of calm has descended on the city - mostly because the financiers, traders, economists and bankers have all cleared their desks and are now bobbing about in the waters of Biarritz. As for me, I'm hoping for a sudden and devastating tsunami in the Bay of Biscay.

This is not just an ugly venting of spleen, but is factually accurate. Markets do much better without experts to ‘guide’ them. The recent savings and loans scandal (hang on, that was the ’80s fraudulent market meltdown – I mean the recent international mortgage fraud) has reminded us that bankers can still be systematically debagged by oily salesmen capable of slapping paint on a privy and calling it the Ritz.

The stampede into dodgy mortgages should have had experts ringing alarm bells far earlier, but the models that they have been using to analyse the markets are all based on ‘equilibrium theory’, which assumes the market will return to a balanced state and the distortions produced by the mortgage bubble will self-correct.

This model is broken, always has been and always will be and yet the economists still cling to it as if it were perfect. Methods such as agent-based modelling, which are proven to be more accurate, are shunned because they are unfamiliar.

What does this have to do with packaging? Well, exactly the same myopia exists in many areas of our industry. I recently learned from the excellent marketing guru Linda Scott, when she visited Oxford University, that most market research methods are proven to be ineffective and yet the industry still clings to them because they are familiar. This is madness and perhaps explains why the success rate of new product development is only 4% – another independently proven fact.

If you want more evidence of madness I would encourage you to do your own research into the recent academic debate on climate modelling – I, for one, am not going to be drawn on that. Suffice to say models and historical evidence have yet to become acquainted.

I am led to the sad conclusion that experts don’t like facts. Rather, they like the familiar and the consensus of crowds instead of common sense. This leads them to place bets we can’t pay and build bonfires from marketing budgets. But they are experts and so we don’t feel we can challenge them. But perhaps we should. Roll on the tsunami.

Steve Kelsey is partner at PI Group. Send comments for Steve to packagingnews.editorial@haymarket.com