Anthrocentrism: A Human Fallacy

Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy.

In popular articles that play down the genetical differences among human populations, it is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups. It has therefore been proposed that the division of Homo sapiens into these groups is not justified by the genetic data. This ...

The “banzhaf Fallacy” Fallacy

A Social Security Fallacy

The article investigates whether compulsory old age provisions are justified from an econom-ic point of view. According to a standard argument, some people would not provide suffi-

A power fallacy.

The power fallacy refers to the misconception that what holds on average -across an ensemble of hypothetical experiments- also holds for each case individually. According to the fallacy, high-power experiments always yield more informative data than do low-power experiments. Here we expose the fallacy with concrete examples, demonstrating that a particular outcome from a high-power experiment c...

A right Royal porphyria fallacy.

We were intrigued by the cover image for the November 2011 issue of Clinical Chemistry, which showed a cover picture claiming that Mary Queen of Scots had a diagnosis of acute porphyria. The diagnosis of porphyria is usually assigned when a presenting patient is currently symptomatic; the range of indicative symptoms is diverse but relatively well defined. The 3 most common acute porphyrias are...