ABSTRACT
Ecological fallacy is interpreted in different ways by different researchers. This fallacy basically arises from wrong interpretation of group-based results to the individuals of these groups. Thus, this has three essential ingredients, and all of them must be present for an ecological fallacy to occur. These are the following: (i) the data must belong to groups and not to individual units, (ii) results are inferred for individuals, and (iii) when individual results become available, they contradict the group results [1]. If there is no contradiction, there is no fallacy. For example, it is generally believed that rice-eating vegetarian populations generally have better brains, whereas wheat-eating populations have better brawn. Extending this to the comparison of a rice-eating person with a wheat-eating person and saying that one will have a better brain and the other a better body, even in the sense of probability, can be fallacious. If some ancillary information on these two types of people is available to support this claim, then there is no problem. The problem arises when group results are directly extended to individuals without supportive evidence for the individuals, and the individual results are found to be contradictory.
