Further Reading: The Streetlight Effect

Essential

Muller, J. Z. (2018). The Tyranny of Metrics. Princeton University Press. The most comprehensive treatment of metric fixation across fields. Muller covers education, healthcare, policing, the military, business, and philanthropy. Accessible and well-argued. (Tier 1)

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press. A landmark work on how the state's demand for "legibility" — simplified, measurable representations of complex reality — has led to catastrophic planning failures. Essential context for understanding why the streetlight effect is structural. (Tier 1)

The Vietnam Case

McNamara, R. S. (1995). In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Times Books. McNamara's own reckoning with his errors. Valuable for understanding how a brilliant analyst could be captured by his own measurement system. (Tier 1)

Halberstam, D. (1972). The Best and the Brightest. Random House. Classic account of how the most talented officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations led the country into Vietnam. The title is ironic — their brilliance was part of the problem. (Tier 1)

Goodhart's Law and Its Applications

Strathern, M. (1997). "'Improving Ratings': Audit in the British University System." European Review, 5(3), 305–321. The paper that generalized Goodhart's Law beyond economics. Strathern's formulation — "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" — is the version most commonly cited. (Tier 1)

Campbell, D. T. (1979). "Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change." Evaluation and Program Planning, 2(1), 67–90. Campbell's original articulation of what is now called Campbell's Law. More technical than Muller but foundational. (Tier 1)

Healthcare Metrics

Dranove, D. et al. (2003). "Is More Information Better?" Journal of Political Economy, 111(3). The key paper on risk selection in response to public quality reporting in cardiac surgery. (Tier 1)

Education and Testing

Research on the effects of high-stakes testing on curriculum narrowing, teaching practices, and educational equity has been extensive. Key contributors include Daniel Koretz (The Testing Charade, 2017) and Wayne Au (multiple publications on standardized testing and social justice). (Tier 2)

GDP and Alternative Measures

Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J.-P. (2010). Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up. The New Press. A report commissioned by the French government, arguing that GDP is an inadequate measure of economic performance and social progress. Written by two Nobel laureates. (Tier 1)

For Instructors

The "lines of code" example from the quiz makes an excellent classroom exercise. Present the metric, ask students what will happen, then reveal the documented consequences. The gap between their predictions and reality illustrates how intuitive the streetlight effect is once named — and how invisible it is before.