Comments on: Beauty Skepticism Part 3 – Anecdotal Evidence

By: Is The Goody Copper Brush Good For Dandruff? | The Beauty Brains

Is The Goody Copper Brush Good For Dandruff? | The Beauty Brains — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 06:02:17 +0000

[...] is plenty of anecdotal evidence that copper brushes are good for dandruff. And there is a scientific evidence that copper ions [...]

By: anactoria

anactoria — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:25:46 +0000

What Janis said, totally! I like this series and this part in particular. I still think a lot of this is due, on the US’s part, to the fact that critical reasoning is so absent in American education (and culture, really) and science is so /scary/. I like the way you’re explaining these: simple and to the point. I heard that’s the best way to explain things. ^_~

By: Moxie Hart

Moxie Hart — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:36:47 +0000

I’m only really fond of anecdotal evidence/studies when it’s studying something rare enough that you can’t necessarily find enough people with the same experience to create a generalizable sample. They’re interesting for rare diseases/phenomena but even then they’re just a starting point.

By: Janis

Janis — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:59:35 +0000

I think the problem with anecdotal evidence is that it’s a starting point, not a conclusion.

If people say, “Pantene seems to make my hair fall out,” that’s where the scientific method STARTS. That’s when you say, “Hm, let’s test this — let’s design an experiment, let’s try to couble-blind it, let’s make sure we have a lot of data points and that we publish so other people can check what we say.” An anecdote is like the key to the car — it turns the crank and gets the whole thing started.

The problem is that people use anecdotes as the endpoint, and not the beginning. Instead of using an anecdote as the beginning of a process to see what’s really happening, they stop there. “Pantene makes my hair fall out, end of story.”

An anecdote is the FIRST brick on the road to knowledge, not the LAST. If you stop there, you never actually get on the road.

By: Meg from FruWiki

Meg from FruWiki — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:01:19 +0000

I’d like to add that anecdotal evidence is inherently biased because people tend to share such testimonials only when they are particularly pleased or displeased with a product.

Plenty of people try something, aren’t impressed either way, and never speak of their experiences because they just don’t feel compelled to. Or if the product was ineffective or even really bad, they might not say anything because they don’t want people to think that they were dumb enough to waste money on that product.