The Plural of Anecdote IS Data!

November 21, 2012 by admin in NetNews with 5 Comments

Self-styled skeptics often repeat this so-called quote: ‘Data is not the plural of anecdote.’ Problem is, the author said exactly the opposite, ‘The plural of anecdote is data.” All those pseudo-experts are, yet again, just plain wrong.

Pompous Pigeon, by Richard Miles (PentaxFanatiK)

Originally published under the title, CHS Medical Myth Smasher #1 – “The Plural of Anecdote is Data” – Is The Correct Original Quotation, by Child Health Safety. Gaia Health greatly appreciates granting permission to republish this myth smasher. Thank you!

As we have recently been examining the science-free zone over at Science Blogs dot Com, here is another howler from the pseudo-science pseudo-skeptics over there. Science Blogs dot Com is the home of bloggers like Dr David Gorski and P Z Myers [and he is supposed to be a professor of biology - ha!!].

There are hundreds of references on Science Blogs dot Com to the phrase “the plural of anecdote is not data“. They repeat it like a religious mantra to slap people down when they give examples of numerous personal experiences.

It seems they do not like the fact that what they seem to think is anecdote – namely the oral testimony of human witnesses – is in fact the primary source of evidence in common law jurisdictions around the world.

So what is the real quote? And why is it relevant?

You see if human testimony can be reliable – and it can be and is – and it can be tested and is tested – including in Court – then medicine should take note of it. Medicine should therefore also take note of case series even when based on oral testimony of patients. You see when you have 10 people coming along separately and independently telling pretty much the same story but of what each of them experienced personally, you have to sit up and take notice. But drug companies don’t like that. You see, if medics had to take notice of oral accounts, then it would be much easier to establish a particular drug caused a particular adverse effect. No fancy tests needed – just careful analysis of the accounts of the victims, their parents and/or physicians and maybe clinical history and any documentary and other witness corroboration.

And yep you guessed it – the pseudo-scientists like Gorski misquote the quote to say it is the opposite of the original quote.

So why would anyone want to do that? Why would anyone running a set of blogs claiming to provide reliable information on science want to mislead everyone about something so basic?

The correct quote is “The plural of anecdote is data“.

So where is the correct quote recorded?

Raymond Wolfinger’s brilliant aphorism “the plural of anecdote is data” never inspired a better or more skilled researcher”

Nelson W. Polsby PS, Vol. 17, No. 4. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 778-781. Pg. > 779.

And how do we know that is a true account of the original? It is confirmed in an exchange of emails between Wolfinger and Fred Shapiro.

Fred Shapiro happens to be Editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations, and several other books and was clearly checking his sources. If you want to see confirmation of the source from an original source document here it is in a linguistlist.org listserv post by Shapiro – you can click on the listserv link and look it up yourself:-

Subject:

Re: “Plural of anecdote is data” (Ray Wolfinger)

From:

Fred Shapiro <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

American Dialect Society <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 6 Jul 2004 23:21:27 -0400

Content-Type:

TEXT/PLAIN

Parts/Attachments:

TEXT/PLAIN (34 lines)

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Nelson W. Polsby PS, Vol. 17, No. 4. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 778-781. Pg.
> 779: Raymond Wolfinger's brilliant aphorism "the plural of anecdote is
> data" never inspired a better or more skilled researcher.

I e-mailed Wolfinger last year and got the following response from him:

"I said 'The plural of anecdote is data' some time in the 1969-70 academic
year while teaching a graduate seminar at Stanford.  The occasion was a
student's dismissal of a simple factual statement--by another student or
me--as a mere anecdote.  The quotation was my rejoinder.
Since then I have missed few opportunities to quote myself.  The only
appearance in print that I can remember is Nelson Polsby's accurate
quotation and attribution in an article in PS:  Political Science and
Politics in 1993; I believe it was in the first issue of the year."

I also e-mailed Polsby, who didn't know of any early printed occurrences.

What is interesting about this saying is that it seems to have morphed
into its opposite -- "Data is not the plural of anecdote" -- in some
people's minds.  Mark Mandel used it in this opposite sense in a private
e-mail to me, for example.

Fred Shapiro

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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: [log in to unmask]               http://quotationdictionary.com
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You may be interested in this take on the topic of anecdotal evidence: Anecdotal Evidence: The Basis of All Knowledge.

Tagged plural of anecdote, plural of anecdote is data, plural of anecdote is not data, pseudo-science, pseudoscience, Raymond Wolfinger, Raymond Wolfinger aphorism, Raymond Wolfinger quote, science, skeptics, who said plural of anecdote

http://twitter.com/pathsofnature pathsofnature

Many modern discoveries were made by anecdotes. Seriously, Meyers is a biology professor? He’s against anything like scientific inquiry.
Dawn

Yes, anecdotal evidence can be the basis of hypothesis formulation for further study. But the data carefully collected and critically analyzed in large scale well designed and controlled scientific studies contrasts wildly with the unreliability of anecdotes. Anecdotes have the disadvantage of small samplings, influence by bias, arising from urban legends or cultural memes, etc. and cannot not lead to credible and well supported conclusions.
- http://gaia-health.com/ Heidi Stevenson
  
  Any suggestion that an anecdote is necessarily based on small samplings is just plain wrong. Anecdotal evidence of autism being caused by vaccines exists in the hundreds of thousands.
  
  Science is also influenced by bias – and worse, there’s an industry around scamming it. It’s called Big Pharma.
  
  As to anecdotal evidence being only a basis for further study, that’s also provably wrong. The fact is that all the science brought to bear on producing bigger crops is a flop compared to the methods developed by farmers through anecdotal evidence.
  
  Any doctor worth anything will base a great deal of his or her practice on the anecdotal evidence brought by patients. As so many have learned the hard way, it’s those doctors who simply follow the hard line of the current fads in their so-called evidence-based medicine, when the doctor refuses to listen – because he knows the truth, not the patient – then the patient is nearly always shortchanged, and sometimes to death.
JennieR

I heard about this particular blog entry from a colleague at the university, it took me a while to find it in the “Gish Gallop” here. She said it was quite entertaining and I agree! Now that you’ve defended anecdotal evidence as superior, why not blog touting subjectivity over objectivity, the value of confirmation bias and accepting post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacies in clinical and scientific analysis and decision making?
- http://gaia-health.com/ Heidi Stevenson
  
  Aren’t you so terribly clever! Now, if you’ll stop chuckling at your clever wit, maybe you could take a moment to read the article – because it doesn’t say what you claim. Anecdotal evidence is not described as superior.