Anecdotal Evidence: How to use critical thinking skills to overcome this common logical fallacy.

[@briankeegan8089]

Nice job. Hope you don't mind if my critical thinking students have a look this fall. Evidence is Module 5.

[@thesciencelens]

I'm glad you liked it! If you're interested, I just made all of my worksheets available for free on my website at www.thesciencelens.com/resources.html. If you use them with your students or just one of the videos I'd be keen to hear how they go.

[@tdiddle8950]

Every day, MD's use both experimental data (tests) and anecdotal evidence (a patient's report of symptoms) to make diagnoses, which, in sum, effect modern medicine. Is modern medicine reliable scientifically? Now THAT'S a good question!

[@thesciencelens]

Oh man, I feel woefully unqualified to answer THAT question! But I think it's a great one.

[@LearningEngineercom]

A report of symptoms isn't anecdotal evidence. The doctor isn't extrapolating out what the patient reports to the general population which is why we don't use anecdotal evidence, they are just applying the symptoms to the patient.

[@LearningEngineercom]

It depends on what you mean by reliable. And compared to what else?

[@tdiddle8950]

Anecdotal evidence has been proven to give valid data with a large enough sample-group.

[@thesciencelens]

There's definitely value in anecdotal evidence. And when used correctly can yield some important insights. The logical fallacy is in taking one or a handful of examples thinking that they mean more than they do. I'm interested to see what AI will be able to do with a large set of anecdotes moving forward. For a human to find meaning in a set of 1000 stories would take years, but I can see the right AI model doing it in a fraction of the time.

[@tdiddle8950]

@@thesciencelens As always, thanks for replying. I like these little YT discussions we're having.

[@tjmns]

​ If 1000 people are reporting a severe adverse reaction to something immediately after eating or taking something. Its legit ! Millions of dollars of food are removed from supermarket shelves from just a few negative reports sometimes. And only from a small sample. The system in this case is logical, because its better to be safe than sorry.

[@LearningEngineercom]

@@thesciencelens Let me help. Examples can't be extrapolated out to the general population because they are not representative of the general population. You can have specific populations like people with cancer or some other condition when performing clinical trials.

[@EuroUser1]

The video fails to address a very relevant point: anecdotal evidence can be right-away made up, for a wide variety spurious reasons.