When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought

by Jim Holt

To mistake regression for a real force that causes talent or quality to dissipate over time, as so many have, is to commit what has been called Galton’s fallacy. In 1933, a Northwestern University professor named Horace Secrist produced a book-length example of the fallacy in The Triumph of Mediocrity in Business, in which he argued that since highly profitable firms tend to become less profitable and highly unprofitable ones tend to become less unprofitable, all firms will soon be mediocre. A few decades ago, the Israeli Air Force came to the conclusion that blame must be more effective than praise in motivating pilots, because poorly performing pilots who were blamed made better landings subsequently, whereas high performers who were praised made worse ones. (It is a sobering thought that we might generally tend to overrate censure and underrate praise because of the regression fallacy.) In 1990, an editorialist for The New York Times erroneously argued that the regression effect alone would ensure that racial differences in IQ would disappear over time.