You are browsing the archive for confirmation bias Archives - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
20 November 2017
Everyone Fights Confirmation Bias, but Science Teaches You How To Win the Battle.
Read the comments on any news story, and you get a free lesson on confirmation bias. This error in thinking strangles our ability to analyse information and make rational decisions. Doctors see it in patients that refuse vaccines for their children and waste money on homoeopathic sugar water in fancy bottles. Vitamin salesman, astrologers, and naturopaths rely on it for a living. It’s also responsible for the anger (rather than the thanks) …
28 February 2014
Did The Farmers Almanac Winter Forecast Verify?? Nope!
I suspect a lot of folks think the Farmers Almanac winter forecast was right, and the reason they think so is because of CONFIRMATION BIAS. Science in many ways is a vaccine against confirmation bias. Read the link on confirmation bias, and my friend Jim Gandy’s guest post. Then you will understand something that those who read horoscopes, wear magic bracelets, or buy pills for their prostate (hawked by retired …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.