cherry picking
Sign in to saveAlso known as suppressing evidence, fallacy of incomplete evidence, fallacies of incomplete evidence, incomplete evidence
fallacy of incomplete evidence
~9 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Cherry-picking is often used in science denial. An example is climate change denial. For example, by deliberately cherry picking inappropriate time periods, here 1998–2012, an artificial "pause" can be created, even when there is an ongoing warming trend.
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position. Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “cherry picking” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.