I'll support you on this one, shdw. I graduated from a world-class aeronautical engineering college a few years ago. While that is fascinatingly the case, we hardly ever talked about "flaperons"; I remember only one professor even mentioning them the entire 3 years I was there. I cannot think of any aircraft that uses them either; but that obviously is my weakness on the subject since there are some in existence. They are flaps that can also act as ailerons, and they act independently of one another as well as in tandem. As explained, anything located close to the fuselage has a shorter moment arm. With a shorter moment arm there must be less of an effect on any axis of movement.

As an aside, the term "moment arm" is synonymous with "leverage"- they mean the same thing.