RE: Anecdotal Evidence
October 6, 2016 at 7:16 pm
(This post was last modified: October 6, 2016 at 7:17 pm by bennyboy.)
Anecdotal evidence is a description of an event, coupled with an attribution about its cause or its nature. The description might be fair enough, but the attribution is likely to be poorly supported.
If someone says, "I started wearing crystals around my neck, and a few weeks later, my cancer was gone," we have a description, possibly real, of events in someone's life. However, if the person proceeds in trying to sell crystals because they have magical healing powers, they are using anecdotal evidence-- they have not demonstrated any link between the crystal and the cure, and have not demonstrated that over the population, crystals will correlate to health.
A VERY common example we've all heard is, "Uncle Bubba smoked 10 cigars a day and drank a bottle of whiskey every weekend, and he lived to be 110. So nah, I like smoking, and if you tell me it will harm my health, then I'll say you're full of shit." However, if you look at the general population, it will be immediately obvious that both smoking and excessive drinking greatly reduce people's life expectancy, and Uncle Bubba was a tough S.O.B. and probably very lucky.
If someone says, "I started wearing crystals around my neck, and a few weeks later, my cancer was gone," we have a description, possibly real, of events in someone's life. However, if the person proceeds in trying to sell crystals because they have magical healing powers, they are using anecdotal evidence-- they have not demonstrated any link between the crystal and the cure, and have not demonstrated that over the population, crystals will correlate to health.
A VERY common example we've all heard is, "Uncle Bubba smoked 10 cigars a day and drank a bottle of whiskey every weekend, and he lived to be 110. So nah, I like smoking, and if you tell me it will harm my health, then I'll say you're full of shit." However, if you look at the general population, it will be immediately obvious that both smoking and excessive drinking greatly reduce people's life expectancy, and Uncle Bubba was a tough S.O.B. and probably very lucky.
