Bureaus "grow like demon weeds."

It would take Cameron to tell you why this was a
perfectly rational piece of behavior. Mr. Ford, who in
the first place had been persuaded against his judgment,
found a large bureau growing on his premises. He
knew the nature of bureaus. They grow like demon
weeds. If you say, "Cut it down to half size," it will be
obediently cut down; but when you come to look at it
a year later it will be twice as big. The only way to
control it, therefore, is to kill it. And that is what
Sorensen knew. Cameron would add: "Moreover, Mr.
Ford thinks the statistician's facts are dead before they
are written down. He says that by the time anyone has
assembled a large collection of facts on any subject
their value has so changed that they are a record of the
past and useless, even dangerous, as guides to the future.
The only facts he cares about are the facts he
finds as he moves forward."

-page 82-83

Read The Wild Wheel.