Parental investment, mate desertion and a fallacy
This short paper by Dawkins and Carlisle is the origin of the phrase Concorde fallacy, and its argument is the opposite of how the phrase is usually used. They were addressing a claim in animal behaviour that a parent should continue investing in offspring in proportion to what it has already invested. Their objection is that this reasoning is unsound: an animal deciding whether to keep feeding young or desert them should be guided only by what it stands to gain from here, not by what it has already spent, since the past investment is gone either way. They named the error after the aircraft whose development continued on the argument that too much had already been spent to stop. The paper is therefore a correction to other biologists rather than a demonstration that animals commit the fallacy. This page describes the argument from public material, because no abstract of the 1976 paper is publicly available.
This short paper by Dawkins and Carlisle is the origin of the phrase Concorde fallacy, and its argument is the opposite of how the phrase is usually used. They were addressing a claim in animal behaviour that a parent should continue investing in offspring in proportion to what it has already invested. Their objection is that this reasoning is unsound: an animal deciding whether to keep feeding young or desert them should be guided only by what it stands to gain from here, not by what it has already spent, since the past investment is gone either way. They named the error after the aircraft whose development continued on the argument that too much had already been spent to stop. The paper is therefore a correction to other biologists rather than a demonstration that animals commit the fallacy. This page describes the argument from public material, because no abstract of the 1976 paper is publicly available.
Written from the public account of the argument this paper made.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
262, 131-133. Names the Concorde fallacy, against Trivers (1972) on parental investment.
Where we use it
- Why You Finish the Series You Stopped Enjoying, Why We Act
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1038/262131a0
DOI: 10.1038/262131a0