While we’re at it, one example I learned afterwards was that the ‘caribou randomization’ story is probably bogus (excerpts):
We will show that hunters do not randomize their behavior, that caribou populations do not fluctuate according to human predation, and that scapulimancy apparently is not selected because it is ecologically advantageous. We shall also show that there is no cross-cultural evidence of divinatory random devices producing randomized subsistence behavior, but rather that people manipulate divination with the explicit or implicit intervention of personal choice.
What is particularly interesting to me is that the apparent beautiful match of this traditional hunting practice with contemporary game theory may be ‘too good to be true’ because it was actually the opposite: I suspect that the story was made up to launder (secret) game-theoretic work from WWII into academic writing; the original author’s career & funder are exactly where that sort of submarine-warfare operations-research idea would come from… (There were many cases post-WWII of civilians carefully laundering war or classified work into publishable form, which means that any history-of-ideas has to be cautious about taking at face value anything published 1940–1960 which looks even a little bit like cryptography, chemistry, physics, statistics, computer science, game theory, or operations research.)
While we’re at it, one example I learned afterwards was that the ‘caribou randomization’ story is probably bogus (excerpts):
What is particularly interesting to me is that the apparent beautiful match of this traditional hunting practice with contemporary game theory may be ‘too good to be true’ because it was actually the opposite: I suspect that the story was made up to launder (secret) game-theoretic work from WWII into academic writing; the original author’s career & funder are exactly where that sort of submarine-warfare operations-research idea would come from… (There were many cases post-WWII of civilians carefully laundering war or classified work into publishable form, which means that any history-of-ideas has to be cautious about taking at face value anything published 1940–1960 which looks even a little bit like cryptography, chemistry, physics, statistics, computer science, game theory, or operations research.)