I’m glad I kept up with yesterday’s news. Had I not, I’d have remained ignorant of two important pieces of research. According to analysis of the names used to identify the days of the week, it seems that, since today is called Wednesday, tomorrow will be Thursday.

Even more interestingly, researchers have used a complicated computer program to trawl through more than a million books and have found that there is a consistent pattern in the Roman alphabet. The letter M always follows L, which in turn follows K. I was intrigued to discover that these are preceded by H, I and J.

No less obvious were the two genuine pieces of research that were revealed yesterday. David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, has used official figures to show that . . . well, a look at the headline above the story in yesterday’s Times tells you all you need to know: “Discipline crumbles in large schools.”

Expulsions from schools with more than 1,500 pupils have risen by 28 per cent since Labour took office. That date matters because the number of such schools has more than doubled since then. The figures also show that 10 per cent of pupils in schools with more than 1,000 children are temporarily excluded, compared with 3 per cent in schools with fewer than 1,000 pupils.

It comes as a shock, I know. Who would ever have thought that large, anonymous comprehensives would have discipline problems? Not the Department for Education, that’s for sure, which responded to the figures thus: “Large schools can, of course, face additional challenges, but with strong leadership and good staff they can also use their size to benefit their pupils and the wider community by offering out-of-hours clubs and community facilities.”

Well, yes. Big can indeed be an advantage in some circumstances. But although the fact I weigh too much could come in useful if I ever have to sit on someone to restrain them, in the real world it simply means I am more prone to ill health, as one look at me would make obvious. And large schools are, as is equally obvious to most of us, more likely to have discipline problems.

The problem is not that research is otiose. It’s always important to have facts behind any argument. The problem is that what should, without any need for research, be obvious is all too often either ignored or disputed by the people who take our money and spend it on our behalf.

As for my weight: yesterday we learnt that researchers at the University of California have made an astonishing discovery. In what is described as “the world’s largest study of weight loss”, they analysed the results of more than 30 studies of dieters and discovered that, after an initial loss, most dieters regain even more weight. Who would ever have believed that?

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