Personal experience is not evidence? The hell you say!

The BBQ Pit
1

In reading (admittedly belatedly) lissa’s fine pitting of suezeekay, I naturally followed the link to the the rant inspiring thread , where at Post No. 99 I encountered this increasingly familiar meme –

You might even recognize his cousin,

*not appearing in either the rant or the inspiring thread but something I thought of as composing this post.

Now, I’ve been on this board long enough to know that whenever someone goes pitting a language/grammar/vocabulary pet peeve he or she is likely to get squashed (see e.g. the ubiquitous “it’s pronounced nu-klee-ar” threads), but this is different, cause, well it just is; so, here goes:

Yes, personal experience is indeed a type of evidence – anecdotal evidence. And although not terribly reliable and often times not very probative, it is evidence nonetheless. I think the words “evidence” and “proof” are being used synonymously (perhaps this is nothing new – I am sure one of the resident etymologists will chide me failing to recognized a centuries old synonymous relationship), and I think that this leads to a whole lot of confusion. I wish it would stop.

2

I think (and I’m no expert) that the spirit of **Personal “observations” are not evidence. ** is that if I see one white cat, my conclusion that all cats are white will not be valid.

3

your logical reasoning and the conlusion it yields are not valid, but the fact remains, there is a white cat and you saw it – your experience is evidence that cats can indeed be white.

4

Personal observations are not evidence? Darwin would be astounded.

5

I think whole bean’s annoyed that the idea that “anecdotal evidence is much less valid than scientific evidence backed up by research” has become twisted into “anecdotal evidence is worth nothing”. Pefectly legitimate gripe.

6

Sorry about the two short posts in a row, I pulled the trigger too quickly. I wonder what the person who made that statement thinks is happening when I scientist looks through a microscope or a telescope, or a fingerprint expert compares prints?

7

yep

8

But on the other hand, there are those who attempt to expand a single personal experience into a generalized rule.

9

The catch is that you are anonymous here, so it wouldn’t be a stretch for you to make something up because nobody would ever know. It has happened before.

Therefore, since your anonymity lends you no credibility, it is pretty much a necessity for you to support an argument with “credible” sources that can be examined critically.

10

People like that probably are into stuff like zymurgy and stuff. Probably.

11

It’s a slippery slope!

12

Also, not all evidence has equal weight. And, a single piece of evidence isn’t enough to prove or disprove anything. The entire body of evidence, weighted appropriately, must be evaluated to form a conclusion.

For example, an out-of-focus, grainy film of a large quadruped in my garden is evidence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. My drunken neighbor’s testimonial of seeing it nibbling his rose bush is also evidence. You may find the quality of the evidence lacking, but they are most certainly evidence.

13

Run for your lives!

14

Gah, tell me about it. I’ve experienced this on message boards in two distinct forms, both annoying.

The first is when I assert an experience I’ve had and someone comes in and says “you are just saying that, there’s no way to know if it’s true. I, however, am a doctor/lawyer/scientist/nationally recognized expert, and I say…”

Excuse me, but how is it that if I say, “I had this experience,” it’s invalid, but when YOU (a.k.a., “some internet yahoo”) claim to be an expert, it’s somehow more valid? I can see taking a skeptical view of my claim – it’s the Internet, after all. But I’m baffled that anyone would, with a straight face, then assert some unproven claim to special knowledge in the very same post.

The second form is sort of a semantic disagreement, I think. Didn’t happen on the Straight Dope, mind you.

I cited a specific event I’d experienced, which, IMHO, supported a topic being discussed, and described it as “here is one data point for our discussion”.

Several people replied to me at great length, explaining to me that my story was not a “data point” because I did not nail down all possible variables and then exhaustively break down the event mathematically.

I replied that if I’d meant that, I would have described my post as an “analysis”. To me, one colloquial meaning of “data point” is basically “one sample, which, when considered in context with many other samples, might show a trend”, as different from “analysis”, which I’d define as “a systematic attempt to study a set of data for patterns and draw conclusions.”

The complaining posters thought I was lying or exaggerating about my experience, because it contradicted their assertions, and I received several complaints demanding that I recant.

I don’t care whether or not anyone believed me, but it was aggravating to see them assert their story without mathematical analysis and simultaneously claim my story was both impossible and worthless without mathematical analysis.

A subjective account of an experience is not a scientific fact, but it does have some value as the starting point for discussion.

Sailboat

15

Are you implying that my dog was not killed by a MtF transsexual jumping out of the World Trade Center on 9/11? How dare you!

16

I agree with the OP. We’re not conducting a science class here. Anecdotal evidence without pictures, cites, or published theory are unfairly frowned upon around here. They count, damn it.

17

Hey, if you’re into unsubstantiated, unverifiable, one-upsmanship, bad faith debates and discussions, I think you’ll find that Usenet will suit you just fine. As for me, I prefer that people don’t pull out “My parents were killed on 9/11, you bastards!” without consequences as an attempt to win an argument.

That could just be me, though.

18

We’re not saying anecdotal evidence is as valid as a substantiated, verifiable, data source, but that it does have some validity. If I have a severe allergic reaction every time I eat seafood, I don’t need a doctor’s opinion to not eat seafood; i’m not going to do that anyway. The doctor’s opinion is helpful in finding out what exactly is causing my reactions, and it might narrow down which seafood I can and can’t eat, or perhaps even mean I can be prescribed anti-allergy drugs to help control my reactions. It’s much more useful. But I can still not eat seafood based on my anecdotal evidence of it giving me an allergic reaction, because it is still (however weak or unscientific) evidence.

19

I have wanted to say the same thing for a while. Anecdotal evidence is very good for refuting all/none/never/always arguments and I say it is very valid at least as a start and all you need if you can produce documentation to back it up.

Poster 1: “No Eagle Scout has ever been convicted of 1st degree murder in the U.S.”

Poster 2: “My neighbor was an Eagle scout and he hunted down and killed his wife, got convicted for 1st degree murder, and is in prison for life.”

One link later and the whole thing is settled.

I see these types of things all the time and a single good anecdote can refute absolute arguments.

20

We must be thinking of different things because this is not what I am writing about.

You’re example is that of a person that positions himself closely to an event (sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally) and then claims that his opinion of any number of things concerning that event is somehow more valid by virtue of his proximity to the event (e.g. you can’t talk about abortion unless you’ve had one; you can’t talk about war unless you’ve fought one; you’re opinions concerning the “war on terror” are invalid unless you lost someone on September 11, 2001). Sometimes proximity lends weight to an opinion, but that’s another thread.

I am talking about people who claim that anecdotal evidence is not evidence, when it most certainly is. Some folks have a hard time with the fact that it’s possible to prove something by assembling lots of little facts that standing alone don’t really prove much of anything – it’s these folks to whom I direct my gripe.