Bluematter.

I remember that in graduate school, Xiao-Li Meng, now editor of this journal, told me they didn't teach Bayesian statistics in China because the idea of a prior distribution was contrary to Mao's quotation, "truth comes out of empirical/practical evidence."

This is from my favourite blogger, Andrew Gelman. The post has a somewhat technical discussion of Bayesian vs classical methods and 'conservatism' in statistics. My take on the quote itself: tis' a sad truth, but empirical evidence do not self-interpret, nor is there a God-given 'natural' way to generate predictions. If you are interested in finding out the 'truth' rather than showcasing a seemingly 'pure' estimation procedure, give Bayes a chance.