
Cherry Picking: When People Ignore Evidence That They Dislike - EndXA
https://effectiviology.com/cherry-picking/
======
topologistics
Of course they use the example of focusing on climate change studies that are
opposed to consensus, but what about when consensus is actually wrong? For
example, high fat diet advocates were accused of cherry picking many years
ago, but now we're swimming in cherries and there is no real consensus on high
fat diets or the cholesterol theory of heart disease, we're in a transitional
period. I think soon there will be a consensus that the prior consensus was
morbidly incorrect. So was that really cherry picking?

~~~
mistermann
> Of course they use the example of focusing on climate change studies that
> are opposed to consensus, but what about when consensus is actually wrong?

Even funnier is that their claim is flat out wrong, based on the study linked
in the article.

Claim: For example, a notable study on climate change examined thousands of
scientific papers on the topic, and _found that approximately 97% of them
support the consensus position that humans are causing climate change_.

Relevant text from the study: We analyze the evolution of the scientific
consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed
scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011
matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. _We find that
66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW_ , 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7%
rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among
abstracts _expressing a position on AGW_ , 97.1% endorsed the consensus
position that humans are causing global warming.

Fact: ~32.6% of the 11,944 peer-reviewed climate abstracts from 1991–2011
matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'peer-reviewed
scientific literature endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing
global warming.

This is one of my favorite memes.

And yes, I realize if we were to contact all of these folks who didn't realize
their studies would become fodder for propagandists, _many_ of them would
_likely_ change their stance in support of the "consensus" (but not actually,
_based on this study_ ), but that's no excuse for literally lying. And people
genuinely wonder why there is a distrust of media and science.

~~~
akovaski
"found that approximately 97% of them support the consensus position"

versus the more correct

"found that among abstracts expressing a position, approximately 97% of them
support the consensus position"

Doesn't strike me as particularly 'wrong' or 'literally lying'. They are
looking at where the consensus position lies on a particular idea that doesn't
need to be mentioned in every abstract in the field. A paper to do with global
warming can analyze reality without stating a cause for global warming in the
abstract; that doesn't mean that the paper should count against one consensus
position or another.

~~~
mistermann
Those two statements are not equivalent.

And the "fact" that is _usually_ printed in the news is 97% of _scientists_.

The distrust, of the media at least, is well earned.

------
anonymousiam
At the time, the consensus opinion of Einstien's special relativity theory was
that it was wrong. The Nobel committee gave him the prize for Brownian Motion,
not relativity.

Galileo also went against the "consensus opinion" when he supported
Copernicus’s heliocentric theory.

I knew this was a AGW piece when I read the headline.

~~~
Isinlor
"The Nobel committee gave him the prize for Brownian Motion" This is not true.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his
services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law
of the photoelectric effect."

Source:
[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/)

Einstein explanation of Brownian motion served as convincing evidence that
atoms and molecules exist and was further verified experimentally by Jean
Perrin in 1908. Perrin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 "for his
work on the discontinuous structure of matter".

Source:
[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1926/perrin/lectur...](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1926/perrin/lecture/)

------
coenhyde
* or when picking commits they do like

------
The_rationalist
For those wanting to discover more cognitive biases:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

~~~
technothrasher
And for a decent introduction to critical thinking in general, I can highly
recommend Carl Sagan's book, "The Demon-Haunted World".

Among many other good things in this book, there is a chapter called “The Fine
Art of Baloney Detection,” which is the best primer in detecting bad thinking
I've seen.

~~~
mistermann
The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

[http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-
Baloney.pdf](http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-Baloney.pdf)

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Fine_Art_of_Baloney_Detect...](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Fine_Art_of_Baloney_Detection)

~~~
rosser
It's interesting to note that some time after writing this, Sagan became aware
of the work of Jim Tucker, at the University of Virginia, attempting to
validate the "past life" reports of children who've offered verifiable details
in their accounts. Many children make such claims, but, as Sagan observed,
“Young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon
checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in
any other way than reincarnation.”

I won't assert the truth of it, and I can think of a couple plausible vectors
that don't involve consciousness surviving death and into another body
(however unlikely they might be), but if it's compelling enough for the author
of _The Demon Haunted World_ to suggest it deserves "serious study", I'm the
last person in the world to gainsay him.

~~~
gus_massa
The complete paragraph is in
[https://www.reddit.com/r/carlsagan/comments/5q2hub/is_this_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/carlsagan/comments/5q2hub/is_this_a_quote_by_carl_sagan/)

I think he is not asking a "serious study" because he think it's real, but
because at some point we must make the experiments to verify or falsify the
theories. (I think that the problem is that there is finite time and finite
money for the experiments, so we must select only some of them.)

~~~
rosser
I think we're in agreement. This is him saying, "I think it's interesting
enough to expend that effort." No one else has to agree, but that a mind like
his thinks so, and based on what I've read of these accounts, I'm inclined to
agree.

I have no idea how to go about falsifying that, though. You'd at a minimum
have to strictly monitor the information flow into a child's environment,
probably from birth, to control for any other vectors for verifiable details.
All in the hopes that some of the study population's children will mention
something you can confirm they didn't overhear, or whatever, which turns out
to comport with the life of someone who's passed. That's perhaps a tough sell
to the ethics committee.

