 The ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras was one of the first thinkers to propose that humans can generate reliable measurements through his "human-measure" principle and the practice of "dissoi logoi" (arguing multiple sides of an issue).This history helps explain why measurement fallacies are informed by informal logic and argumentation theory.The increasing availability and circulation of big data are driving a proliferation of new metrics for scholarly authority, and there is lively discussion regarding the relative usefulness of such metrics for measuring the value of knowledge production in the context of an "information tsunami".