Anecdote
From RationalWiki
An anecdote is generally a brief story, often (auto)biographical, that illustrates a particular aspect of a situation. An example is the story of George Washington and the cherry tree.[1]
In the world of pseudoscience, an anecdote is the equivalent of a peer reviewed, double blind, repeatable scientific experiment with consistent results. In other words the true believers accept that just because something once seemed to work for someone -- "Billy-Bob ate 3 pounds of apples a day for a year and his cancer disappeared" -- then it will work for everyone, everywhere, every time.
This sort of thing is termed anecdotal evidence and is usually the starting point of a proper scientific investigation, whereas it is all too often the ending point of a pseudoscientific investigation. The use of anecdotal evidence to draw a conclusion is like using the NBA all-star teams to estimate the average height of Americans. Try that in an introductory statistics class and you will be rewarded with a big fat F.
An example of anecdotal evidence comes from Andrew Schlafly's essay, "Do Liberal Teachings Cause Mental Illness?" an argument so daft and anti-intellectual that it doesn't even amount to pseudoscience, in which he cites actor Stephen Fry as a famous example of a person with liberal values who suffers a mental illness. When other editors pointed out that bipolar disorder, Fry's condition, is largely hereditary, this information was added to the article, but the example still remains in the essay as "anecdotal evidence" for this bizarre argument. Naturally Andrew Schlafly himself isn't suffering from any mental illness and neither is any other Conservative Republican. George W Bush's irrational and disastrous foreign policies were of course not due to any psychiatric condition, just natural stupidity.
Anecdotal evidence is often used in politics, journalism, blogs and many other contexts to make or imply generalisations based on very limited and cherry-picked examples, rather than reliable statistical studies. A classic instance was Ronald Reagan's story of a "welfare queen" who was abusing the system, who Reagan attempted to portray as indicative of the average welfare recipient. It turned out she didn't even exist, when some reporters finally decided to look for her.
Remember: the plural of "anecdote" is not "data."
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ This anecdote is now almost universally considered to be untrue. See Washington's Cherry Tree - Legend or Fact?.
