Logical fallacies

anecdotal evidence

Your uncle is not a study.

  • “My cousin got rich on it, so it works.”

    “What happened to everyone else who tried?”

    You’re hearing from the survivor. The rest didn’t get a story told about them.

Stories are memorable and statistics aren’t, so a single anecdote will outweigh a large study in most people’s heads. That’s a fact about attention, not about evidence.

The legitimate version: an anecdote is a fine reason to investigate something. One person reporting a side effect is how investigations start. It’s just not how they finish.

Now go find the study.