Ecological inference refers to the study of individuals using aggregate data and it is used in an impressive number of studies; it is well known, however, that the study of individuals using group data suffers from an ecological fallacy problem (Robinson in Am Sociol Rev 15:351-357, 1950). This paper evaluates the accuracy of two recent methods, the Rosen et al. (Stat Neerl 55:134-156, 2001) an...

The spectacularly varied responses to our target article raised big-picture questions about the nature of seeing and thinking, nitty-gritty experimental design details, and everything in between. We grapple with these issues, including the ready falsifiability of our view, neuroscientific theories that allow everything but demand nothing, cases where seeing and thinking conflict, mental imagery...

The hot-hand fallacy has long been considered a widespread cognitive illusion with important consequences for decision-makers. A sports player may misinterpret a lucky streak of successful shots, and pursue a more aggressive strategy that hurts one’s performance. A physician prone to the hot-hand fallacy may also misinterpret random streaks of poor patient outcomes, and respond by treating the ...

DIKW hierarchy is the model used for discussion of data, information, knowledge, wisdom and their interrelationships. However, definitions of data, information, and knowledge are entrapped in a logical fallacy known as circular definition. There are some agreements in the definitions without the fallacy. The missing ‘Intelligence’ in DIKW plays a major role between knowledge and wisdom. This gi...

The central purpose of this inquiry is to analyze the fallacy of wrenching from context. Logic textbooks and other accounts briefly explain this manipulative technique as a linguistic distortion of the other party’s thesis. It is a fallacy in which there are two or more parties engaged in argumentation and one has interpreted or represented the position of another in an improper way that has fa...

Many philosophers appeal to the “fallacy of approximation”, or “problem second best”. However, despite pervasiveness such appeals, there has been only a single attempt provide systematic account what fallacy is. We identify shortcomings this and propose better one in its place. Our not captures all contexts which approximation-based reasoning occurs but also systematically explains several diff...