Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and science writer. He is on this site for one narrow reason, and the page is kept narrow to it. With Tamsin R. Carlisle he published a short 1976 note in Nature on parental investment and mate desertion, arguing against reasoning from investment already made, and naming that error the Concorde fallacy, after the aircraft that kept being funded on the grounds that it was already half built.
Who they are
The argument the name came out of was about birds, not about people. Dawkins and Carlisle were asking why a parent bird that has already put more into the eggs is not thereby more likely to stay, and their answer was that what has already been spent is not a reason for anything: only what happens next counts.
Carlisle should be named alongside him. The 1976 note is a two-author piece, and the name usually travels attached to one of them.
A great deal attaches to Dawkins's name that has nothing to do with the reason he appears here, and none of it is the business of this page.
Key papers
Dawkins, R., & Carlisle, T. R. (1976). "Parental investment, mate desertion and a fallacy", Nature, 262, 131 to 133. Abstract and secondary accounts only.
Key ideas
The naming is the contribution recorded here. Economists had the idea under the name sunk cost; the 1976 note gave behavioural biology its own term for it and a memorable example.
The example is worth keeping because it is honest about what the error costs. The aircraft was not finished because it was going to pay; it was finished because stopping would have meant admitting the money was gone.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Dawkins, R., & Carlisle, T. R. (1976). Nature, 262, 131 to 133.
- Vault record, 2026-09-11. This page is deliberately scoped to the 1976 naming and the argument it belonged to.