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 demonstrates 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 provides 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.

中文翻译：

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有益或有害的无知：弗莱比约（Flyvbjerg）对赫希曼（Hirschman）隐藏手的测试的稻草人谬误

Bent Flyvbjerg教授在该杂志的最近一篇论文中，“无知的谬误：对赫希曼的隐藏之手的检验”，声称没有这种无知的东西，而无知对项目的成功是有害的。此外，他认为，如果赫希曼（Hirschman）的“掩盖之手”原则正确，那么利益超支将超过成本超支。因此，通过统计检验，他证明了“躲藏之手”实际上比“邪恶双胞胎”计划谬误少见。在此回合中，作者证明了Flyvbjerg的检验是建立在一个稻草人谬论上的，并且他没有反驳“躲藏之手”。与Flyvbjerg（专注于狭窄的成本和收益）相反，本文提供的证据表明，虽然在项目管理失败但项目成功的项目中发现了“躲藏之手”，规划谬误适合于既是项目管理又是项目失败的项目。在此基础上，作者分析了世界银行资助的161个不同类型项目的样本，并发现“躲藏之手”占上风。虽然未来的研究应确定这一发现，但作者随后指出了Flyvbjerg检验的方法学局限性。确实，具有讽刺意味的是，在这一基础上反驳了“隐藏之手”（Hiding Hand），它是针对成本效益分析这一理念而设计的。更糟糕的是，Flyvbjerg在成本效益分析中忽略了整个生命周期项目的成本和收益，意外的项目影响，困难以及解决问题的能力，这些都是Hirschman所珍惜的，因此，他们对待项目管理作为一种“黑匣子”。最后，