![]() One of the reasons scientists form a hypothesis and then try to disprove it with new research is to avoid the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.Like the Texas Sharpshooter, someone announces that a target has been hit at which no one previously knew we were even aiming.If you are being dealt 5 cards, there is a 100% chance that one of these extremely unlikely 1 in 2.6 million events will occur.The Sharpshooter’s Fallacy is at work when are astonished by the occurrence of extremely low probability events of this sort.Often this sort of astonishment is as foolish as picking up your cards at the poker table after being dealt every hand and exclaiming, “My gosh! There is only a 1 in 2.6 million chance that I would get this hand!”.“There must be something serious at work here.If you mean the chance of getting this particular hand, then the probability is 1 in about 2.6 million.If you mean, “how likely would it be to be dealt a hand with neither any matched cards, nor a straight, nor a flush?” then the chance is about 1 in 2.I mean, what are the chances?” Asking this question under many circumstances amounts to using the same data to test your hypothesis that you used to generate the hypothesis. The Texas Sharpshooter’s fallacy concerns the tendency for people to attach undue significance to artifacts of randomness such as clustering, streaks, and coincidences.The more we look, the more of such differences we would find, but when you draw the bull’s-eye around the similarities – whoa.Kennedy had lustrous auburn hair, while Lincoln wore a stove pipe hat. ![]()
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