In Defense of Anecdotal Evidence
Other people’s experiences matter, too.
I’m sitting in Starbucks listening to the conversation next to me, as per usual.
“This is a real thing with a lot of women. Doctors don’t listen to them. It’s like — a lot of women say this. Doctors don’t listen to me.” A young woman says to her male friend. He quickly replies, “Well, maybe they [the doctors] know something you don’t.”
The argument that “doctors don’t listen to women” isn’t new. A man denying that it’s really happening also isn’t new. This brief conversation highlights a major problem with the way we view personal anecdote. If a persons experience doesn’t line up with ours, we tend to reject it outright.
In a lot of ways, this is completely fair. After all, people lie or misconstrue reality all the time. Need I even bring up the Salem Witch Trials?
In a lot of ways, this is completely unfair. After all, experiencing an event differently than someone else doesn’t mean that what the other person experienced isn’t real or that your perception is by default the “correct” one.
The argument against personal anecdote is pretty simple. People hate to take anecdotal evidence into account because it’s not 100% verifiable and it isn’t always indicative of a larger phenomenon. This argument…
