Concept · Cognitive Bias: Causal and statistical fallacies
McNamara fallacy (quantitative fallacy)
Origin: Yankelovich, 1972 (named after McNamara)
Biological Parallel
Forest management optimized for timber yield: maximize board-feet per hectare, rotation intervals, growth rates. All quantifiable. What's unmeasured: mycorrhizal network complexity, nurse log succession, keystone species interactions, soil microbial diversity. Ecosystems managed purely by metrics collapse—because resilience, redundancy, and adaptation emerge from the unquantifiable web of relationships. Measuring the measurable while ignoring what matters is ecological malpractice.