Dominic Cummings wants 'weirdos' to help run the UK. Will it work?

Dominic Cummings, a senior adviser to UK prime minister Boris Johnson, has said he wants the UK government to hire "weirdos and misfits with odd skills" to apply science to the civil service. While primarily a quirky job ad, his blog post also offers a glimpse into how he sees scientific research transforming the government. As well as listing categories of people he would like to hire – including mathematicians and physicists – the blog post also focuses on the utility of data science, artificial intelligence and the "science of prediction". But does his vision make sense? Can policy-making really be improved by building digital models of reality, or applying machine-learning to government data, as Cummings appears keen on?