Furthermore, and I find it odd that us smarty pants math people keep forgetting this. Numbers make decisions easily justifiable. Those story points, those days tracking roadblocks. All that data, weather it's wrong or right, allows people to make decisions where they would otherwise have to justify with nebulous reasoning. The down side is, our point keep doesn't explain the reasoning behind delays and other bad numbers. Hopefully, we get better at quantizing this shit, but it's not going to go away. Their is something like a gravitational force in accountability. Those who can shirk it, to others or to numbers, must shirk it to have more power.
And honestly I'd rather blame numbers rather than people, the impersonality of bad numbers allows you retro without personal attacks and defensiveness, which allows more rapid improvement.