The ‘Fusion Fallacy’ Revisited

The Nirvana Fallacy Revisited—Posner

I recall hearing when I first came to the University of Chicago in 1969 the expression “Nirvana Fallacy,” used to describe the belief then dominant in the economics profession that market failures could and should be rectified by government intervention, assumed to be apolitical and effectively costless. The belief was unsound; government failure is commonplace, partly because of politics, part...

"The Fallacy of the Impartial Expert" revisited.

This article, in memory of Bernard Diamond, revisits his seminal editorial on the "Fallacy of the Impartial Expert." In a later article he formulated his thesis most succinctly: "There is no such thing as an impartial expert witness; the objectivity of the expert witness is largely a myth." I argue that the implications of his challenging assertion have as yet not been fully recognized. Ultimat...

The “banzhaf Fallacy” Fallacy

Cell fusion in the liver, revisited

There is wide agreement that cell fusion is a physiological process in cells in mammalian bone, muscle and placenta. In other organs, such as the cerebellum, cell fusion is controversial. The liver contains a considerable number of polyploid cells: They are commonly believed to originate by genome endoreplication, although the contribution of cell fusion to polyploidization has not been exclude...

Rate currencies and the foraging starling: the fallacy of the averages revisited

In classical optimal foraging models long-term rate of energy intake (the ratio of expected amount of food over expected time) is assumed to be die maximized currency, because doing this is consistent with minimizing die loss of alternative opportunities. Here this possibility and various alternatives are examined quantitatively using European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) in the laboratory. The...