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Daniel Yankelovich
(29 Dec 1924 - 22 Sep 2017)
American social scientist and public opinion analyst who founded a marketing and research firm (1958). He authored over a dozen books with focus on changes in American values, public opinion, and the relationship between experts, institutions, and the public.
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Science Quotes by Daniel Yankelovich (4 quotes)
But when the McNamara discipline is applied too literally, the first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. That is ok as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t be measured or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can’t be easily measured really isn’t very important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can’t be easily measured doesn’t exist. This is suicide.
— Daniel Yankelovich
In magazine article, 'Interpreting the New Life Styles', Sales Management (15 Nov 1971), 26. [The essence of the Fallacy is that it reduces complex systems to simplistic numbers; it ignores context, meaning, or human factors that resist quantification; and it leads to distorted decision-making and unintended consequences. A common example, for example, concerning education is ranking schools solely by standardized test scores, ignoring creativity or critical thinking. —Webmaster]
Senator Moynihan, now retired, used to say that what counts in American politics is what is measured. So that, if economists measure productivity and unemployment, those are the things we focus on. And he and others have always deplored the lack of social indicators, indicators that would give us the same kind of measure for our society that economists give us for the economy.
— Daniel Yankelovich
Interview, transcript on the website of PBS for The First Measured Century (Dec 2000).
The act of collaboration must start with dialogue. You cannot build relationships without having an understanding of your potential partners, and you cannot achieve that understanding without a special form of communication that goes beyond ordinary conversation.
— Daniel Yankelovich
This wording is the leading paragraph of Daniel Yankelovich, 'The Magic of Dialogue', Nonprofit Quarterly (Fall 2001), 9, No. 3. The article is adapted from The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation (1999). It is not clear if the wording of the extract above is as written by Yankelvich. It may be an editor’s summary, though faithful to the content of the book from which the article is adapted. (Webmaster’s guess is that it is an editor’s summary.) In the article, not only is the extract not given in quotation marks, but the paragraph continues seamlessly into an editorial comment: “Long-time observer of the American public Daniel Yankelovich shares with us his analysis of what dialogue is and how to do it.” An online search of the available public book limited preview gives no application result for “collaboration.” If you have found the quote in the book, or a close match, please contact Webmaster.
What I call the McNamara fallacy … is: If you’re confronted by a complex problem that is full of intangibles, you decide to measure only those aspects of the problem that lend themselves to easy quantification, either because you find the other aspects difficult to measure or because you assume that they can’t be very important or don’t even exist.
— Daniel Yankelovich
In magazine article, 'Interpreting the New Life Styles', Sales Management (15 Nov 1971), 26. [The McNamara Fallacy is a logical error or flawed approach to decision-making where only quantifiable data is considered important, while qualitative or hard-to-measure factors are ignored or dismissed. It is named after Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, who was known for emphasizing quantitative metrics (like body counts, sorties flown, and tons of bombs dropped) as measures of success, while neglecting harder-to-measure factors such as morale, political stability, and public opinion. —Webmaster]
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
