What's the difference between "cherry-picking" and "confirmation bias"?

[pnerd]

What's the difference between "cherry-picking" and "confirmation bias"?

What's the difference between "cherry-picking" and "confirmation bias"?

Thanks in advance.

 

[athon]

Not much, really. You could probably use both terms interchangably in some circumstances. Cherry picking tends to convey a sense of deliberateness, as if somebody is actively selecting information that agrees with them. Confirmation bias tends to indicate a lack of awareness of conflicting information.

Athon

 

[Wolfman]

Also, both terms begin with a "c", but end with a "g" and a "s" (respectively).





You're welcome.

 

[athon]

Also, both terms begin with a "c", but end with a "g" and a "s" (respectively).

Your day job is on Sesame Street, right?

Athon

 

[Wolfman]

Your day job is on Sesame Street, right?

Athon

Right up until the day that the show was brought to them by the letter "F".

 

[BPScooter]

I would accuse someone of "cherry picking" if they had masses of data and only chose to analyze or discuss those that confirmed the hypothesis, leaving the rest to be found by others. I would accuse someone of "confirmation bias" when, given few data, they chose to interpret them in a manner that supported the hypothesis without considering alternate explanations.

 

[Puppycow]

Like Athon said, cherry picking is deliberate, confirmation bias is unconscious or half-conscious.

 

[Jeff Corey]

I agree that cherry picking involves selecting the data after being collected to support some hypothesis (and the file drawer effect involves hiding the nonsupporting data), but confirmation bias occurs when one only tries to collect data that could support the hypothesis and avoids efforts to falsify it. The Wason card selection task demonstrates this quite nicely.

 

[Jeff Corey]

double post

 

[Denver]

I agree with Athon's explanation, but the question also enters as to when is it appropriate to use either?

Depending on the person, if I were trying to illuminate their own confirmation bias, I might instead use the term cherry-picking, because it sounds less technical, and it's a word they probably are already familiar with and so they would more quickly grok my meaning.

But since cherry-picking does also have that sense of deliberateness, I'd have to be careful to not come across as accusing them of purposeful self-deception (if I felt that did not apply).

 

[quadraginta]

I agree with Athon's explanation, but the question also enters as to when is it appropriate to use either?

Depending on the person, if I were trying to illuminate their own confirmation bias, I might instead use the term cherry-picking, because it sounds less technical, and it's a word they probably are already familiar with and so they would more quickly grok my meaning.

But since cherry-picking does also have that sense of deliberateness, I'd have to be careful to not come across as accusing them of purposeful self-deception (if I felt that did not apply).

In general I don't associate the term "cherry-picking" with "self-deception", but rather a quite considered effort to mislead someone else, since it involves a conscious selection of data supporting a predetermined POV.

If not "confirmation bias", which I think of as more subtle and subconscious, I'd be more apt to label "purposeful self-deception" as "denial".

 

[GreyICE]

Confirmation bias is when you discard events that don't fit the hypothesis, in favor of ones that do. For instance, lets say you believe in astrology. There's 3-4 things that are supposed to happen today that are predicted by your horoscope. One of them definitely happens, and you think 'OH! The horoscope predicted that.' The other three don't. You forget about them. Eventually you've built up a firm stock of things the horoscope has predicted.

Cherry picking is basically the same thing, but deliberate. You can see it in a lot of the global warming threads, the deniers will chose one tree ring study or one weather station or one particular problem and try and argue global warming isn't happening because of a single weather station.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Confirmation bias is when you discard events that don't fit the hypothesis, in favor of ones that do. For instance, lets say you believe in astrology. There's 3-4 things that are supposed to happen today that are predicted by your horoscope. One of them definitely happens, and you think 'OH! The horoscope predicted that.' The other three don't. You forget about them. Eventually you've built up a firm stock of things the horoscope has predicted...

That is technically termed "belief persistence - the tendency to hang on to beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence" (Weiten, Introductory Psychology, p.337)

 

[GreyICE]

That is technically termed "belief persistence - the tendency to hang on to beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence" (Weiten, Introductory Psychology, p.337)

Not quite. The person believing in horoscopes has plenty of evidence they work. Why once they predicted that she would meet a man, but not to trust him. She met a guy she thought was cute, and three months later he cheated on her! And just last week it said that unexpected events could bring large windfalls, and the company she worked at announced that because of everyone's hard work, they'd give out extra bonuses this year!

Grasp the difference?

 

[Jeff Corey]

No. You said, "The other three don't. You forget about them." That the contradictory evidence.

 

[novaphile]

Where I struggle with the concepts, is where "cherry picking" might be appropriate.

For example, (please forgive my vague memory about the details, I read about this study a long time ago, and can't find any internet references):

[NB. I mentioned this study in a thread about IQ yesterday, so it's in my mind again.]

A post-war study on the effect of "school dinners" on IQ found that there had been no improvement in IQ scores for the children who participated in the school dinners programs.

A much later review of the raw data found that there were a small percentage of children whose IQ jumped more than 20 points, suggesting that there were circumstances where the provision of school dinners had generated (for those children) a significant benefit.

These days a similar study would try to control for factors like parents income, nutrition at home etc. to help identify possible factors for further investigation.

 

[novaphile]

Here's a nicely written up explanation of one of the most famous examples of "cherry picking" from a set of observations. Milikan's Oil Drop Experiment

 

[novaphile]

Richard Feynman made an interesting comment about biases in experimentation in regard to the Millikan experiment, reproduced here on Wikipedia: Millikan's experiment and cargo cult science

 

[athon]

I agree that cherry picking involves selecting the data after being collected to support some hypothesis (and the file drawer effect involves hiding the nonsupporting data), but confirmation bias occurs when one only tries to collect data that could support the hypothesis and avoids efforts to falsify it. The Wason card selection task demonstrates this quite nicely.

I fold and defer to Jeff. His explanation is better.

Athon

 

[BPScooter]

In my professional life, I really try hard to avoid all bias. Perhaps the big thing here is intent, or will. If a person intends to deceive, they can use the tools of cherry-pick and what I'd call "drive the point" to create their own variation on the ultimate un-known. Yet a person with good intent may fall into error, for reasons of ignorance, envy, greed, jealousy, avarice, or any of the other sins.

So, once one realizes that all agendas are indeed someone's agendas, and we're all prone to the sins to some extent, where does science, as created by individual egoistic all-too-human people like us, go from here?

Post-modernist critics of science are invited to reply.