Talk:Texas sharpshooter fallacy

The second example seems to be inappropriate, since walking in the storm does, in fact, increase your chances of becoming a ground for lightning. Does anyone agree that we should change it? Cluster

Sure, if you can think of a better example. Maybe "There have been three plane crashes in the last month, so I'm cancelling my flight." or "There have been three burgleries by Chinese gangs recently, so all Chinese people must be crooks." (note to the hard of thinking: the two quotes above are presented as examples of fallacy.) Zeimusu

But "There have been three plane crashes in the last month, so I'm cancelling my flight." can be perfectly reasonable logic. It does not attempt to lay blame on something unrelated, since it doesn't judge in the least. Since planes are such complex machines, it's virtually impossible to rule out a potential cause. Let's see... "I saw four cats on my way to work, but five cats on the way back; they must be multiplying." What do you think? Cluster 21:51, 5 May 2004 (UTC)Reply

The definition is oh so technically correct. But... was this written by a professor of legalese for mathematicians? Is it really the sort of language that's appropriate for a cooperative dictionary for the public? --Farry 15:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hmm. I've just revisited this 10 years later, and my above comment is no longer true. Somewhere in the previous 10 years, it's been replaced with reasonably clear language.Farry (talk) 17:28, 23 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

I find the "counterexamples" section extremely unclear. It is extremely convoluted and unclear, to the point where I can barely discern its relevance (if any) to the rest of the article. Furthermore, what is meant by a "statistical-based facts?" Does the author mean "statistically significant relationships?" SH

Is all of this original work? It shouldn't be... 82.235.98.252 (talk) 19:17, 27 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

The second example, about Joe winning the raffle, seems erroneous to me. Obviously if Jane said there was "no way" Joe could have won by chance, she'd be wrong, but that's just hyperbole, not the fallacy the article is about. More realistically, Jane would have said that Joe's winning was so improbable that he probably cheated. Whether or not that's reasonable depends on Jane's prior probability for Joe successfully rigging the raffle. We could get into that in the article, but it doesn't have much to do with the article's subject, so I think we should remove this example instead. --Allen (talk) 03:39, 29 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

Removed. --Allen (talk) 05:37, 2 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

The second fallacy, frequency of leukemia in towns A and B, seems too weak an example, since it depends on the italicized "must." Indeed it seems that the town with higher frequency of leukemia has a higher chance of having something wrong with it - cf "nonexample: unknown probabilities." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.251.89.29 (talk) 07:44, 13 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

The fallacy does not apply if one had an ex ante, or prior, expectation of the particular relationship in question before examining the data...

This extensive paragraph could really do with an example or two to clarify it, but I cannot supply one myself, having come to the article in order to learn about the concept detailed therein. Centrepull (talk) 09:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

I have to say that this article didn't really help me understand what the Texas sharpshooter fallacy is exactly. I can't be sure whether that is caused by my inability to read for comprehension or by the collective authors' inability to write for comprehension. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.125.232.127 (talk) 14:05, 8 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

As the above comment of May 2008 points out, this all seems to be original research: only the first paragraph has any references. I've tagged it until someone can come up with some suitable sources for the article ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 18:35, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Would this count? Tebow threw for 316 yards, fourth quarter ratings were apparently 3.16, and he used to put John 3:16 on his cheeks in college football. People then claim it's a sign from God. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.155.73.151 (talk) 23:28, 10 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Where does the name "Texas sharpshooter" come from? 128.237.203.40 (talk) 19:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

The second paragraph of this article says "The name comes from a joke about a Texan who fires some gunshots at the side of a barn, then paints a target centered on the biggest cluster of hits and claims to be a sharpshooter." --McGeddon (talk) 19:55, 20 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

The fallacy is aptly described by the vivid metaphor of the Texas sharpshooter, which is nicely explained in the text. But here is the formal definition in the first two sentences of the article: The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are stressed. From this reasoning a false conclusion is inferred.

This is so general, it sounds like a patent application. You'd never be able to guess the actual meaning from this loose goose. How about:

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when the hypothesis to be tested is chosen post-hoc, after all the data has been collected. This appears to give the hypothesis a predictive power it doesn't really have.

Or something in this direction 129.132.209.90 (talk) 23:17, 16 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

It was driving me crazy that this article claims "The name comes from a joke about a Texan who fires some gunshots at the side of a barn, then paints a target centered on the biggest cluster of hits and claims to be a sharpshooter" -- and yet I couldn't find anyone actually attempting to tell it as a joke. The two footnotes only link to sources which also claim in one sentence that it is based on a joke, but they do not tell a joke either. I found an example on Quora asking "How does the Texas Sharpshooter joke actually go?", but nobody answered it. (Yet. I might reply after posting this.)

Anyway, after some digging, I finally found a real life joke attributed to an edition of "Jewish Currents" from 1977. The source still doesn't link any proof, but it sounds legit. I'm wondering if this is a useful addition to the article at all? I am tempted to quote it verbatim, but I could just add another footnote instead.

• From barrypopik.com:

Google Books

Jewish Currents

Volume 31

1977

Pg. 31:

“Along the road he stopped at a village to rest his mount. He sat down under a tree—and right there in front of him was the side of a big barn. He couldn’t believe his eyes. That whole side of the barn was covered with little circles, drawn with chalk, and in the center of each circle was a bullet hole! He jumped up in amazement. Who is this sharpshooter around here who never misses? Maybe they could have a little contest while he was here.

“So he knocked on the door of the farmhouse and asked if they knew who the marksman was. Yes, they did. They brought him a barefoot boy of about twelve. ‘Here he is, Your Excellency, our son the sharpshooter!’ Of course, the prince was surprised. He asked the boy, Tell me, young fellow, how do you manage to hit the bullseye all the time? Here, look at all these medals. I’ve just finished five years of training and even I couldn’t hit the target every single time.’

“‘Oh,’ said the boy, ‘there’s nothing to it. I just like to shoot. So I shoot at the side of the barn and then I take the piece of chalk and draw a circle around the hole.’”

--Kazim27 (talk) 17:04, 10 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

Good find. The Popik website actually includes a link to the Google Books archive of Jewish Currents, so we could use that source directly. --McGeddon (talk) 17:32, 10 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

Can we name this article the Maggid Fallacy instead? The source is the Dubner Maggid, from the 18th century. He was an Aesoplike rabbi, and this is probably his most famous story about how he found such appropriate stories. It was a child archer in the original version, with an arrow in each bullseye. 2A01:73C0:501:4BAA:6471:B46A:905E:6C60 (talk) 18:50, 1 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Negative. No reliable sources use this term, and Wikipedia is not a venue for advancing political correctness. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 00:50, 2 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Fair enough. Can a section on the Maggid be added to the article as the originator? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:73C0:500:A634:D51C:8C1B:AC48:EF93 (talk) 06:12, 14 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

I suggest the example of Power Lines and childhood Leukaemia is removed. A recent meta-analysis has found a statistically significant link here https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251628 AmbientTennis (talk) 11:44, 16 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

@AmbientTennis and Editor2020: I now looked very briefly at both the source originally given by Editor2020 (here, in 2015) and the one by AmbientTennis. The former (still the only given source) is from the printout of some TV programme; the latter from a serious-looking research article. The TV link is relevant to the extent that it explicitly discusses in terms of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. However, the criticism is not even reported as decisive for the US policy; although it indeed is for the Swedish.

My conclusion is this: I'd like to see the example remain, but only as sourced adequately (which it now isn't). If so, I also think that the Corean metastudy could be referenced, provided that it is not refuted in a relevant manner, since its publication. The point is this: If the example could be sourced adequately, it should be included as an example of the fallacy, whether or not later non-fallacious investigations confirmed its findings; but if there indeed has been such confirmation, then this also should be mentioned (in order not to give a false impression that there are no health risks involved). I suspect that the original investigation process indeed was fallacious in the way described; which in that case means that it neither would confirm, nor refute, the correlation between living within relatively strong magnetic fields an a slightly increased risk of childhood leukemia. The study would still remain fallacious, independently of whether such a correlation later has been confirmed or refuted by statistically relevant later investigations. JoergenB (talk) 20:28, 23 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Srich32977: I reverted your addition of Paul the Octopus to the section Texas sharpshooter fallacy#Related fallacies. My reason was that I found nothing in our article about Paul indicating or even vaguely suggesting that the presented report on his abilities to divinate the outcome of these football matches was fallacious in any manner; except a very brief discussion on whether Paul possibly could have recognised the different flags stuck at the various food containers, which was concluded with a refutation based on the "fact" that Paul (an Octopus vulgaris) probably were colour blind, since a research articled had concluded that so almost certainly the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis would be.

In short: I very strongly believe that Paul had no true occult (European) football match outcome divination power. I can come up with several guesses about what kinds of fallacies were involved in this story. However, since the linked article (in its present version) does not propose any likely kind of fallacy, we should not (now) include a link to it under the heading Related fallacies. Regards, JoergenB (talk) 19:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)Reply