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

[@johnknight9150]

Excellent, beautifully structured.

[@Didier-cu6cb]

Perfect

[@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?

[@onenewworldmonkey]

I've been thinking about this subject. It seems that all the creators of the content on this subject believes that legal trials, which are composed of anecdotal evidence, should be disregarded.

[@EuroUser1]

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

[@thesciencelens]

Without a doubt. Although, you could argue at that point it's stopped being anecdotal and just become straight up lies.

[@EuroUser1]

@@thesciencelens My point is that the investigator has essentially no way to tell apart an honest anecdote from a lie. And this is the biggest weakness of anecdotal evidence. Faking an experiment is difficult, and the experiment can be repeated later to confirm or dismiss the alleged results. While faking an anecdote is much easier, and there's no standard way to confirm it.

[@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.

[@jaceking5938]

Yeah because a set of data is made up of individual data which themselves are anecdotes

[@onenewworldmonkey]

I'm struggling with this one a great deal. In other words, I don't believe it, which is based on several things. 1. A fallacy happens during an argument, which in turn happens when there is a disagreement. I wonder what the percentage is between discussions and arguments. I like to hear anecdotal evidence. Its entertaining, sometimes enlightening, and , from colorful people, funny. 2. Science based studies are often wrong. I could fill a book but it would only be anecdotal even though I was a Lab Manager and dealt with them every day before I retired. "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". A man can have his feet in an oven and head in a freezer and have an average temperature of 98.6. How many studies are done disproving a previous one? Did you trust a previous one? Additionally, what was the purpose of the study? Who paid for it? If you cared, I could give you a study of how strong our sense of smell is in relation to a deer, for example, where a deer is 10 times stronger, 100 times stronger, 1000,and 100,000 depending on the study. 3. If I'm on vacation and someone say a tsunami just hit our hotel, my money is on the anecdote. I think you did a great job making your video, but just disagree with the popular notion.

[@jaceking5938]

I can certainly see why you'd struggle 😅

[@DesGardius-me7gf]

This fallacy has gotten even worse ever since the advent of the internet.