One of the most common and insidious bits of cognitive self-deception is the process of anomaly hunting.

Pseudoscientists – those pretending to do science (maybe even sincerely believing they are doing science) but who get the process profoundly wrong, use anomalies in a different way. They often engage in what we call anomaly hunting – looking for apparent anomalies.

What pseudoscientists do is look for “apparent” anomalies – things that cannot be immediately explained, or (even worse) are just quirky coincidences. Often they also look at the edges of detectability where data becomes fuzzy and anomalies are easier to imagine. Think of the fuzzy pictures of Bigfoot or UFOs, with believers looking at details smaller than the resolution of the images and declaring the presence of anomalies.

They imagine that if they can find (broadly defined) anomalies in that data that would point to another phenomenon at work. They then commit a pair of logical fallacies.

- First, the confuse unexplained with unexplainable. This leads them to prematurely declare something a true anomaly, without first exhaustively trying to explain it with conventional means.

- Second they use the argument from ignorance, saying that because we cannot explain an anomaly that means their specific pet theory must be true. I don’t know what that fuzzy obect in the sky is – therefore it is an alien spacecraft.

What pseudoscientists often fail to recognize is that if you take any complex natural phenomenon, historical event, object or process and you look for apparent anomalies (broadly defined), you will find them. Humans are great at pattern recognition, and so if you look for coincidence in the data you will detect them. You will also find features that resulted from a complex interplay of unique events and therefore will be impossible to provide a specific explanation.

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-hunting/

are you trying to understand the human brain and how it works?...

if you take a look at the varied members here    the ones who post most of the time...

most of us are bonkers for being here... it doesnt mean we are bonkers though.. I think!

Thanks PZ547 for providing such an concise example of anomaly hunting.
It's also a good example of the argument from ignorance fallacy.

I'm not going to go into the details as this would quickly degenerate into a Moon landing hoax thread but to cherry pick apparent "anomalies", just because you don't happen to understand them, doesn't disprove the reality of the Moon Landings 


cods wrote on Jan 5^th, 2020 at 2:16pm:


I am fascinated by how the human brain works. It's limitations, quirks and foibles. And this forum is certainly a rich breeding ground for that.

The_Barnacle wrote on Jan 11^th, 2020 at 10:51am:


And I'm interested in the Brain that is the size of a Planet.
So far, it's pretty depressing.

The mirror in Hubble telescope had an anomaly of a small fraction of the thickness of a human hair. All the photos came out fuzzy. That anomaly had to be eliminated before the telescope could take sharp clear pictures

Jasin wrote on Jan 28^th, 2020 at 6:14pm:



No it wasn't spotted until it was too late. But if a pseudo scientist had been inquisitive enough before it was launched, he could have asked: "Will there be any optical aberration due to the difficulty of working within such a fine tolerance of one millionth of an inch"

(The anomaly was caused by a misaligned optical tester, testing the mirror as it was being ground. Nobody bothered to double check the alignment)