Person · Seed idea · last reconsidered September 8, 2026
Marilyn Strathern
British anthropologist (b. 1941) who gave the audit society its most quoted sentence about measures and targets.
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Interpretation
Marilyn Strathern (b. 1941) is an anthropologist of kinship and of bureaucracy, and the formulation everybody quotes as "Goodhart's law" — when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure — is hers, from a 1997 paper on university audit. The economist Charles Goodhart said something adjacent about monetary policy in 1975; the sentence people repeat is Strathern's.
Connected ideas
related to
- 'Improving ratings': audit in the British University systemSource
Strathern is the paper's author.