McNamara Fallacy

Named after Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, who relied heavily on quantitative metrics such as enemy body counts to gauge progress during the Vietnam War. Sociologist Daniel Yankelovich formalized the critique in his 1972 book Corporate Priorities, outlining a four-step progression from measuring what is easy, to dismissing what cannot be measured, to concluding it does not exist.