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Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy refers to cherry-picking data or findings to support a false conclusion. It involves focusing only on a subset of data that supports an idea while ignoring other aspects that may contradict it. An example is firing shots at a barn and painting a target around the densest group of hits, claiming it shows one is a sharpshooter. The fallacy arises when a large dataset is available but only a small subset is analyzed, ignoring other factors that could account for similarities in that subset. It is committed by forming a hypothesis only after examining the data, rather than having a specific hypothesis beforehand.

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39 views1 page

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy refers to cherry-picking data or findings to support a false conclusion. It involves focusing only on a subset of data that supports an idea while ignoring other aspects that may contradict it. An example is firing shots at a barn and painting a target around the densest group of hits, claiming it shows one is a sharpshooter. The fallacy arises when a large dataset is available but only a small subset is analyzed, ignoring other factors that could account for similarities in that subset. It is committed by forming a hypothesis only after examining the data, rather than having a specific hypothesis beforehand.

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Nugraha Pratama
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Texas sharpshooter fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Texas sharpshooter fallacy


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are
ignored, but similarities are stressed. From this reasoning a false conclusion is inferred.[1] This fallacy is the
philosophical/rhetorical application of the multiple comparisons problem (in statistics) and apophenia (in
cognitive psychology). It is related to the clustering illusion, which refers to the tendency in human cognition
to interpret patterns where none actually exist.
The name comes from a joke about a Texan who fires some gunshots at the side of a barn, then paints a
target centered on the biggest cluster of hits and claims to be a sharpshooter.[2][3][4]

Contents
1 Structure
2 Examples
3 See also
3.1 Related fallacies
4 References
5 External links

Structure
The Texas sharpshooter fallacy often arises when a person has a large amount of data at their disposal, but
only focuses on a small subset of that data. Some factor other than the one attributed may give all the
elements in that subset some kind of common property (or pair of common properties, when arguing for
correlation). If the person attempts to account for the likelihood of finding some subset in the large data with
some common property by a factor other than its actual cause, then that person is likely committing a Texas
sharpshooter fallacy.
The fallacy is characterized by a lack of a specific hypothesis prior to the gathering of data, or the
formulation of a hypothesis only after data have already been gathered and examined.[5] Thus, it typically
does not apply if one had an ex ante, or prior, expectation of the particular relationship in question before
examining the data. For example one might, prior to examining the information, have in mind a specific
physical mechanism implying the particular relationship. One could then use the information to give support
or cast doubt on the presence of that mechanism. Alternatively, if additional information can be generated
using the same process as the original information, one can use the original information to construct a
hypothesis, and then test the hypothesis on the new data. (See hypothesis testing.) What one cannot do is use
the same information to construct and test the same hypothesis (see hypotheses suggested by the data) to
do so would be to commit the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.

Examples
A Swedish study in 1992 tried to determine whether or not power lines caused some kind of poor
health effects. The researchers surveyed everyone living within 300 meters of high-voltage power lines
over a 25-year period and looked for statistically significant increases in rates of over 800 ailments.
The study found that the incidence of childhood leukemia was four times higher among those that
lived closest to the power lines, and it spurred calls to action by the Swedish government. The problem

25/11/2015 19:29

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