McNamara fallacy [SEP] named after
McNamara fallacy
The McNamara fallacy (also known as quantitative fallacy), named for Robert McNamara, the US secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968, involves making a decision based solely on quantitative observations (or metrics) and ignoring all others. The reason given is often that these other observations cannot be proven.
The fallacy refers to McNamara's belief as to what led the United States to defeat in the Vietnam War—specifically, his quantification of success in the war (e.g. in terms of enemy body count
blatant allegory must necessarily not be regarded as such if the author intended it not to be so.)
- Kettle logic – using multiple, jointly inconsistent arguments to defend a position.
- Ludic fallacy – the belief that the outcomes of non-regulated random occurrences can be encapsulated by a statistic; a failure to take into account that unknown unknowns in determining the probability of events taking place.
- McNamara fallacy (quantitative fallacy) – making a decision based only on quantitative observations, discounting all other considerations.