This fallacy is related to what cognitive psychology refers to as the principles of grouping. Having made the reasoning in question, you infer a conclusion that could be false. Similarly, you magnify the importance of what you intend to defend through this phenomenon.Īnother way to interpret this fallacy, in terms of information selection, is by ignoring the differences that may exist in your data while emphasizing similarities.
They can also manipulate or tweak the information in order to convince someone (or themselves) about something. Selective informationĪs you can see, people can devalue information that’s inconsistent with their ideas through the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. In this case, you would ignore the celestial bodies that could distort the figure you’re looking for. Your culture taught you to draw a succession of imaginary lines to link the stars and form figures when, in reality, their position is determined by chance.
In other words, you manipulate the data to confirm your hypothesis.Īnother example of this fallacy is the interpretation of star constellations. This fallacy would indicate you had a premonitory dream as 3 + 6 – 2 = 7 and this was the number you dreamed of. Imagine that you dream of the number seven while you stayed in hotel room number 362 (of which you were previously unaware of). To continue understanding the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, here’s an example you could easily find in your daily life. Examples of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy Thus, according to this fallacy, someone modifies observable data in order to confirm their hypotheses (just like the shooter in the story did). In other words, he altered the data (painted the targets) to confirm his hypothesis (he was a sharpshooter). Later, he painted a target centered on each one of them and proclaims himself a sharpshooter.”Īs you can see, the shooter took the necessary measures to make his action seem logical in order to prove his worth. Without further testing, such a conclusion is seldom if ever justified.“There was a shooter who randomly fired several shots at a barn. Similarly, when looking at data, there is a danger of jumping to a conclusion that a random cluster is a causal pattern. This fallacy lives up to its striking name because the Texas sharpshooter takes a random cluster, and by drawing a target onto it makes it appear to be causally determined, as if the Texan were shooting at the target. Patterns in data can be useful for forming hypotheses, but they are not themselves sufficient evidence of a causal connection. For instance, if a disease is contagious, it may be clustered around a carrier.Īt best, the occurrence of a cluster in the data is the basis not for a causal conclusion, but for the formation of a causal hypothesis which needs to be tested. Even if the cluster is not the result of chance, there are other possible reasons for the clustering, other than the cause chosen.The cluster may well be the result of chance, in which case it was not caused by anything.There are two reasons why this is fallacious: This fallacy occurs when someone jumps to the conclusion that a cluster in some data must be the result of a cause, usually one that it is clustered around. But an epidemiological study ultimately showed that the cancer rate was no greater than that of the general population.
Sharpshooter fallacy movie#
Hexavalent chromium in the water supply of a small California town was blamed for causing cancer, resulting in a $333 million legal settlement and a movie starring Julia Roberts. … The Erin Brockovich incident, one of the most famous, is among the many that have been debunked. * Example:Įach year…epidemiologists regularly hear from people worried that their town has been plagued with an unusually large visitation. The story of this Lone Star state shooter has given its name to a fallacy apparently first described in the field of epidemiology, which studies how disease spreads in a population. The Texas sharpshooter is a fabled marksman who fires his gun randomly at the side of a barn, then paints a bullseye around the spot where the most bullet holes cluster. Draw a circle around them and you have what looks like a bull’s-eye. …he epidemiologist Seymour Grufferman coined the term “Texas sharpshooter effect.” Stand way back and blast the side of a barn with a shotgun and then find some holes that are crowded together.
Sharpshooter fallacy pro#
Taxonomy: Logical Fallacy > Informal Fallacy > Non Causa Pro Causa > The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy