Although a school's diet and exercise policies may be less than ideal, it appears that early school environments contribute less to overweight than do nonschool environments.

Scholars claim that futures and foresight science should overcome “confusion” regarding the definition of core concepts, for example, the scenario. Admittedly, defining scenario has been a challenge. Current practice, which results in repeated attempts to clarify said confusion with yet another new definition of scenario, has apparently not advanced the field. An alternative option is not to redefine scenario, but to, instead, create a shared definition composed of component parts of pre‐existing definitions. The result is an operant or synthesized definition based on analysis of claims indicating what “a scenario is…” and “scenarios are…” in the literature on scenario planning. The authors find that scenarios have a temporal property rooted in the future and reference external forces in that context; scenarios should be possible and plausible while taking the proper form of a story or narrative description; and that scenarios exist in sets that are systematically prepared to coexist as meaningful alternatives to one another. Despite claims to the contrary, the authors find that the academic community of futures and foresight science does not seem to suffer from so‐called confusion over the definition of scenario, and thus, it is time to sunset the use of claims to this end.

For more than a decade, futures studies scholars have prefaced scholarly contributions by repeating the claim that there is insufficient theory to support chaotic scenario methodology. The strategy is formulaic, and the net effect is a curious one, which the authors refer to as the scenario planning paradox. Contributing fresh theory supposedly attends to the "dismal" state of theory, while contributing new typologies purportedly helps bring order to methodological chaos. Repeated over time, the contribution strategy breaks down. Effort to resolve the theoretical and methodological issue, which motivates re-statement of the claim in the first place, ultimately fails. In actuality, the field is distanced from its purported goals. The "dismal" state of theory encourages scholars to adopt theory that is not necessarily tethered to a common core, which does not contribute to a shared, foundational theoretical perspective in futures studies. Perceived chaos gives way to typologies, which, as they mount, contribute to the chaos they were meant to resolve. The end result, intended by no one, is that theory remains dismal and methods remain chaotic. This direction for the field is indefensible and untenable; either the field accepts this claim as a statement of truth, for which the solution is substantially enhanced empiricism, or rejects the claim and re-interprets the bounty produced by said claim to be a kind of richness in theory and method rather than the implicit paucity, poverty, and imperfection that they oft signify to the field now

Kees van der Heijden is an icon in the futures and foresight academic and practitioner community. Educated at the Technische Universiteit Delft, his work at Royal Dutch Shell, the Global Business Network, the Strathclyde Business School at University of Strathclyde, the Saïd Business School and the Templeton College at University of Oxford, and the Netherlands Business School at Nijenrode University has shaped the scholarly field of futures studies as well as the practical world of scenario facilitation. This article is a 25‐year reflective and retrospective book review of Kees van der Heijden's seminal text Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. The authors conducted interviews with colleagues, coworkers, collaborators, students, and friends of Kees van der Heijden to add depth and dimension to this retrospective work. To bring van der Heijden's work into scholarly conversation with the extant literature, we also situated this return to Scenarios in the context of related works and other reviews of both editions of the book.

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