The hydrophobic effect has been explained by the peculiar properties of liquid water. However, recent works by Marmur proposed a novel explanation: the hydrophobic effect is caused by the self-assembly of hydrophobic solutes driven by the theoretical upper bound of excess free energy. Here I show that this argument is erroneous, based upon a rigorous statistical mechanical analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.