Forcing the phenomenon to fit the measure or the model, and discarding whatever will not fit.
From Greek myth: Procrustes stretched or amputated guests to fit the bed. It is the mythic ancestor of the McNamara fallacy, and Taleb revived the term for exactly that use.
In practice
- A patient whose symptoms match no diagnostic code is recorded under the nearest one, and the statistics know only the nearest one.
- A reporting template with five categories forces every project into one of five shapes, and the projects reorganise themselves to fit.
- Standing
- The mythic ancestor of the McNamara fallacy.
- Subject
- Science & Epistemology
- Essay
- Paradoxes in the data, and sayings about knowing