I expressed myself poorly, "should we trust our model or the actual results?" was a restating of “Should we trust models or observations?” to make it more clear what the original quote actually meant (did it?); that you will never have future observations only past observation, so when dealing with future events one can only depend on models. Of course when the future unfolds we will be able to do the observations, but then future observations has become past observation. One can only stear the course of the future, never the past. Thus trust in predictions.