Development Review Beneficial or Detrimental Ignorance: The Straw Man Fallacy of Flyvbjerg’s Test of Hirschman’s Hiding Hand Lavagnon A. Ika University of Ottawa, Canada article info Article history: Accepted 6 October 2017 Available online 3 November 2017 Key words: Albert O. Hirschman Hiding Hand ignorance project management straw man fallacy summary In a recent paper in this journal, ‘‘The Fallacy of Beneficial Ignorance: A Test of Hirschman’s Hiding Hand”, Professor Bent Flyvbjerg claims that there is no such thing as beneficial ignorance and that ignorance is detrimental to project success. Moreover, he argues that if Hirschman’s principle of the Hiding Hand were correct, then benefit overruns would exceed cost overruns. Thus, with a statistical test, he demon- strates that the Hiding Hand is in fact less common than its ‘‘evil twin”, the Planning Fallacy. In this rejoinder, the author shows that Flyvbjerg’s test is built on a straw man fallacy and that he fails to refute the Hiding Hand. Contrary to Flyvbjerg—who focuses on the narrow costs and benefits—this paper pro- vides evidence that while the Hiding Hand is found among projects that are project management failures but project successes, the Planning Fallacy fits with projects that are both project management and project failures. On that basis, the author analyzes a sample of 161 World Bank-funded projects of different types and finds that the Hiding Hand prevails. While future research should ascertain this finding, the author then points out the methodological limitations of Flyvbjerg’s test. Indeed, it is ironic that the Hiding Hand, a principle crafted against the very idea of cost–benefit analysis, is refuted on that very basis. Even worse, Flyvbjerg, in his cost–benefit analysis, ignores the full life-cycle project costs and benefits, the unintended project effects, the difficulties, and problem-solving abilities so dear to Hirschman, and, thus, treats the management of projects as a kind of ‘‘black box”. Finally, the author submits that Hirschman was a behavioral project theorist, and argues that it is more important to shed light on the circumstances where the Hiding Hand works than to question whether the principle of the Hiding Hand is right. Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 370 2. The Hiding Hand ..................................................................................................... 371 3. From the Hiding Hand controversy to the Planning Fallacy ................................................................... 373 4. The Hiding Hand, the Planning Fallacy, and project performance: a project management lens ....................................... 375 5. Flyvbjerg’s statistical test of the Hiding Hand: valid refutation or strawmanning? ................................................ 377 6. Flyvbjerg’s statistical test of the Hiding Hand: true empirical landscape?........................................................ 377 7. Flyvbjerg’s statistical test of the Hiding Hand: methodological limitations ....................................................... 379 8. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 380 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................... 381 References .......................................................................................................... 381 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.10.016 0305-750X/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. World Development 103 (2018) 369–382 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect World Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev