fallacies
On Cherry-Picking
22/02/15 21:11 Filed in: Feminism
Cherry-picking is an extremely common fallacy which, as Wikipedia points out, is "a major problem in public debate". That being the case, it is extremely important to establish what cherry-picking is, and what it is not.
So first of all we need to be clear that cherry-picking is not the same as finding evidence to support your position. There is absolutely nothing wrong with "pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position," and I'll go into some examples of this later. If you claim that merely identifying evidence which supports your position is cherry-picking, then all evidence ever produced for anything would be cherry-picking. You would be undermining the very idea of evidence.
The important distinction with cherry-picking is the second part of the definition from Wikipedia: "while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position." The main focus of cherry-picking is not what you say, but what you don't say. It is a fallacy of omission. But it is also important to note that not all omissions will be significant, relevant, or amount to a contradiction.
All cherry-picking involves omission of data, but not all omission of data involves cherry-picking.
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So first of all we need to be clear that cherry-picking is not the same as finding evidence to support your position. There is absolutely nothing wrong with "pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position," and I'll go into some examples of this later. If you claim that merely identifying evidence which supports your position is cherry-picking, then all evidence ever produced for anything would be cherry-picking. You would be undermining the very idea of evidence.
The important distinction with cherry-picking is the second part of the definition from Wikipedia: "while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position." The main focus of cherry-picking is not what you say, but what you don't say. It is a fallacy of omission. But it is also important to note that not all omissions will be significant, relevant, or amount to a contradiction.
All cherry-picking involves omission of data, but not all omission of data involves cherry-picking.
Read More…