Cherry picking
Cherry-picking (often also English: cherry picking ) is commonly known as a simile for a "selfish effort to secure only the most attractive parts of something specific to the rather unattractive other to leave."
The theory of argumentation called cherry-picking as a technique in which only evidence or examples are given that its own arguments support, while other documents which contradict the arguments or refute them, be aware omitted. Cherry-picking is one of the central features of pseudoscientific argumentation . A classic example is the cherry-picking by the tobacco industry , which tried to discredit scientific findings on the harmfulness of smoking with this argumentation strategy. Among other things, cherry picking is often used by climate deniers to draw (public) attention to individual fragments of information, often taken out of context, while at the same time ignoring any evidence that contradicts the desired conclusion.
Action
In science it is necessary to evaluate all available data and evidence in order to arrive at a well-founded judgment. In view of the amount of scientific literature (for example in climatology there are over 220,000 studies in the period from 1980 to 2014), it is hardly possible to cite all the evidence or evidence. For this reason, evidence is usually used on the basis of a representative cross-section, mostly widely received papers from journals with a high impact factor . A frequently practiced form of summarizing and evaluating the current state of research in a scientific discipline according to objective criteria are so-called review articles , which can be expanded into meta-analyzes for a very extensive complex of topics . Such a selection has nothing to do with cherry picking. This case only occurs if the selection of documents is so selective that the overall picture is skewed, i.e. if the conclusions from the small group of documents presented suggest a different conclusion than the one resulting from the total number of documents. The problem is that almost all arguments can be "proven" by the cherry-picking argumentation strategy. However, many scientific publications are subjected to a peer review , so that a cherry-picking approach is usually noticeable.
Examples
Climate change denial
With regard to the argumentation strategies of deniers of man-made climate change, Farmer and Cook cite the following of cherry-picking:
- Short periods of time
This tactic is used, for example, with regard to the global surface temperature, which does not increase evenly every year, but is superimposed by statistical noise . Instead of the long-term trend, short-term periods are selected here, with two extreme values being specifically used within the noise. A classic example is the selective selection of 1998 for the calculation of temperature trends. With this extremely warm year as the starting point of the time series, the following years give the impression of a significantly lower temperature rise. On this basis, climate deniers falsely argued that global warming had stalled since 1998 . If, on the other hand, 1997 is used as the starting point instead of 1998, the whole argument falls apart.
- Isolated examples
Isolated examples are given and at the same time examples that would lead to different results are specifically ignored. For example, despite global glacier retreat, there are a few glaciers around the world which, contrary to the general trend, are increasing in mass and volume. Some climate deniers use these exceptions as an example to argue against the existence of global warming , ignoring the documented number of melting glaciers. Another example is the selective rendering of James E. Hansen's climate projections by Patrick Michaels . When Hansen gave a testimony to the US Congress in 1988, he created three different projections for global temperature developments, each based on different scenarios for global carbon dioxide emissions. Ten years later, Michaels cited only the most extreme of Hansen's projections, ignoring the other two completely, and then claiming that Hansen was 300 percent wrong.
- Specific places
Another strategy used by climate deniers is to limit their data selection to certain locations and thereby ignore a broader database. A certain temperature profile of a single place is often used to argue against the facts that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current temperatures. From a global perspective, the situation is such that in some places it was warmer than today, but in others it was colder. Overall, that is, taking into account the global climate and not just individual locations, it was colder than it is today during the Medieval Warm Period .
- Isolated research
Only the few research papers that confirm the positions of climate deniers are cited, while many other research papers that come to the opposite conclusion or refute the “skeptical” papers are ignored. For example, a work by Richard Lindzen is often cited as evidence of low climate sensitivity , but hardly any reference is made to the large number of papers that postulate a higher climate sensitivity. Those works that indicate methodological deficiencies in Lindzen's work are also kept secret. Another example is the criticism of the hockey stick diagram , which usually ignores the fact that the results of this work agree on all essential points with a number of similar peer-reviewed studies.
- Quota mining
In quote mining, quotes from research or personal correspondence are deliberately taken out of context in order to convey a misleading picture. One example of this is the hacking incident at the University of East Anglia's climate research center , which climate deniers branded as a Climategate. During this incident, e-mails from climate researchers were scoured for quotes that were intended to create the impression that the scientists involved were acting with fraudulent intent, while the overall context showed that they were actually only discussing technical details. In fact, up to 2013 nine investigative commissions independently of one another came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of misconduct by climate researchers. These results were then reinterpreted by climate deniers as a further indication of a conspiracy within climate researchers.
Further examples
Cherry picking is also u. a. used by evolution deniers. Among other things, it is claimed that fossils that extend over more than one geological layer are evidence against the theory of evolution. However, the occurrence of such fossils can be explained by the rapid deposition of sediments around a fossil. Evolution deniers also reinterpret quotes from scientists who argue about how exactly evolution took place and then use them as evidence against evolution itself . This is what is known as quote mining (see above).
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cherry picking. Duden , accessed on September 9, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d e Sven Ove Hansson: Science denial as a form of pseudoscience . In: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science . tape 63 , 2017, p. 39–47 , doi : 10.1016 / j.shpsa.2017.05.002 .
- ↑ a b See G. Thomas Farmer, John Cook : Climate Change Science. A modern synthesis. Volume 1 - The Physical Climate . Dordrecht 2013, p. 451.
- ^ Robin Haunschild, Lutz Bornmann, Werner Marx: Climate Change Research in View of Bibliometrics . In: PLOS ONE . 11, No. 7, July 2016. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0160393 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Cf. G. Thomas Farmer, John Cook: Climate Change Science. A modern synthesis. Volume 1 - The Physical Climate . Dordrecht 2013, pp. 451f.
- ↑ Iselin Medhaug, Martin B. Stolpe, Erich M. Fischer, Reto Knutti : Reconciling controversies about the 'global warming hiatus' . In: Nature . tape 545 , no. 7652 , 2017, p. 41–47 , doi : 10.1038 / nature22315 .
- ↑ James Lawrence Powell: The Inquisition of Climate Science . New York 2012, p. 172.
- ↑ James Lawrence Powell: The Inquisition of Climate Science . New York 2012, pp. 171f.
- ↑ See G. Thomas Farmer, John Cook: Climate Change Science. A modern synthesis. Volume 1 - The Physical Climate . Dordrecht 2013, p. 455.