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Ecological Fallacy (ecological + fallacy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences50%

Selected Abstracts

Exposing the ,Second Text' of Maps of the Net

JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, Issue 4 2000
Martin Dodge
Maps have long been recognized as important and powerful modes of visual communication. In this paper we examine critically maps which are being produced to represent and promote information and communication technologies and the use of cyberspace. Drawing on the approach of map deconstruction we attempt to read and expose the ,second text' of maps of the Net. As such, we examine in detail a number of maps that display, with varying degrees of subtlety, the ideological agendas of cyberboosterism and techno-utopianism of their creators. A critical reading of these maps is important because they are widely reproduced and consumed on the Internet, in business and governmental reports, and in the popular press, all too often without a detailed consideration of the deliberate and intended messages being communicated. As we illustrate, many of these maps not only promote certain ideological messages but are often also poor in terms of cartographic design, with many containing serious ecological fallacies. We restrict our analyses to maps at the global scale. [source]

The Regional Environment and a Firm's Innovative Performance: A Plea for a Multilevel Interactionist Approach

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2007
Sjoerd Beugelsdijk
Abstract: Following the recent critical debate on the role of the firm versus that of the region, this article contends that for a true test of the importance of the role of the region for a firm's innovative performance firm-specific heterogeneity needs to be minimized. Empirical studies have tended to deduce that the region matters from the macrophenomenon of regional clusters of economic activity. This deduction has led to an ecological fallacy, in which global phenomena or data aggregates that are actual representations of lower-level phenomena cannot be generalized to those lower levels. This article argues that if researchers want to analyze how a firm's environment affects its performance, they need to include firm-level strategy and structure. As an empirical illustration of this argument, the article presents a test,controlling for a number of firm-specific factors,of whether regional characteristics like the intensity of regional research and development (R&D), the number of R&D workers in the region, and the presence of a research institute are significantly related to a firm's ability to produce innovations. The findings suggest that the firm-specific drivers of innovation are more important than is a firm's regional environment. The article concludes that a renewed focus on the main actors and their interrelationships is needed, particularly those that involve the exchange of knowledge, to assess the extent to which such interactions are carried out within bounded territories. [source]

Periodontitis and cardiovascular disease: an ecological fallacy?

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ORAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2001
Hans-Peter Müller
[source]

GENETICS AND RECENT HUMAN EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION, Issue 7 2007
Alan R. Templeton
Starting with "mitochondrial Eve" in 1987, genetics has played an increasingly important role in studies of the last two million years of human evolution. It initially appeared that genetic data resolved the basic models of recent human evolution in favor of the "out-of-Africa replacement" hypothesis in which anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa about 150,000 years ago, started to spread throughout the world about 100,000 years ago, and subsequently drove to complete genetic extinction (replacement) all other human populations in Eurasia. Unfortunately, many of the genetic studies on recent human evolution have suffered from scientific flaws, including misrepresenting the models of recent human evolution, focusing upon hypothesis compatibility rather than hypothesis testing, committing the ecological fallacy, and failing to consider a broader array of alternative hypotheses. Once these flaws are corrected, there is actually little genetic support for the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis. Indeed, when genetic data are used in a hypothesis-testing framework, the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis is strongly rejected. The model of recent human evolution that emerges from a statistical hypothesis-testing framework does not correspond to any of the traditional models of human evolution, but it is compatible with fossil and archaeological data. These studies also reveal that any one gene or DNA region captures only a small part of human evolutionary history, so multilocus studies are essential. As more and more loci became available, genetics will undoubtedly offer additional insights and resolutions of human evolution. [source]