Little Red Herrings

Red herrings and rotten fish

Geoffrey B. West ∗, Van M. Savage, James Gillooly, Brian J. Enquist, William. H. Woodruff, James H. Brown 1 Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA. 2 The Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA. 3 Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA. 4 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson...

MEFV mutations - therapeutic guides or red herrings?

Background/question Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) is a hereditary inflammatory disorder characterised by self-resolving attacks of fever and serositis common in populations from Mediterranean ancestry [1]. Mutations affecting MEFV gene is believed to be responsible for the disease phenotype[1]. The correlation between the genotype and phenotype is not very strong, indicating the presence o...

Chasing red herrings: making sense of the colors while mapping.

Red Herrings and Revelations: The Destabilizing and Stabilizing Effects of Economic Theory

This paper assumes that output depends on a large number of variables, but that economic theory has only revealed a subset of these variables. The variables that determine output include exogenous shocks, as well as endogenous variables that depend on both the exogenous variables and agents’ expectations. This paper examines a policy maker’s attempts to forecast output under two different types...

The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood

Researchers have long been fascinated by the strong continuities evident in the oral traditions associated with different cultures. According to the 'historic-geographic' school, it is possible to classify similar tales into "international types" and trace them back to their original archetypes. However, critics argue that folktale traditions are fundamentally fluid, and that most international...