Debating and propaganda techniques #3 : Observational selection, also known as cherry-picking, is a tactic like counting the hits and forgetting the misses. Overlook and ignore evidence you dont wish to see. And encourage your audience to be equally blind. Observational selection will destroy the validity of any statistical study. The classic example of this is: Something very unusual happens, and it turns out that a tabloid psychic had predicted it. So the psychic must be the real thing, able to see the future, right? Wrong. It turns out that the self-proclaimed psychic made many hundreds of screwy, off-beat predictions, and just by chance, one of them came true. The psychic just doesnt bother to tell you about all of the wrong guesses that didnt come true... Fans of Nostradamus still do this for him.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 08:30:11 +0000
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