The rationality for such action is generally attributed to intellectual-fraud, behavioural biases and, at times, honest errors.īoth new and experienced Data Scientists are susceptible to the two aspects of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, and must take adequate measures to guard against the same. The second version of the fallacy (also known as P-hacking) pertains to the act of conducting multiple tests to prove or disprove certain hypotheses, but reporting the results of only those tests with favourable or low p-values, while largely ignoring the results of the others. The rationality for such action is generally attributed to the absence of adequate data (for analysis), behavioural biases, over-reliance on past results & experiences, and intellectual-laziness. The first version of the fallacy (also related to the Clustering Illusion) is about establishing specific patterns after weak or even negligible data analysis, and then 'processing or transforming' the available data and 'structuring' new theories to force-fit them into those patterns. This fallacy is one of the most widely prevalent Data Science practitioner mistakes. If your first impression is that this scenario has nothing to do with the Data Science practice, think again. Post that, he erases all the other bull's-eyes that he had painted, and proudly displays the one with the bullet as proof of his sharpshooting skills.
It is obvious that he would hit one of these various targets. In another version of this fallacy, the shooter first paints multiple bull's-eyes at the side of a barn, and then fires a bullet at them. This scenario is known as the Texas Sharpshooting Fallacy. He then showcases his 'marksmanship' to the world, and gets widely appreciated for his skills. Imagine a below-average shooter (the original story has a Texan) randomly firing at the side of a barn, and then painting bull's-eyes around the tightest clusters of holes made by his gunshots. Environmental Health Technical Brief, Cancer clusters, Connecticut Department of Public Health, 2012."If you torture the data long enough, it will confess." Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, 1991. A recent national review of cancer cluster investigations conducted over the past 20 years showed that extensive efforts to find environmental causes of community cancer clusters have not been successful (Goodman et al. While there are indeed some examples of cancer cluster studies that have identified a common cause and have advanced scientific knowledge, the vast majority have not. And, although the reason has really been an environmental cause in a few cases, most of the time there aren’t any apparent causes besides pure randomness. There are some areas where the number of cancer cases is unusually high, which in the past has lead people to assume that there must be a causal link, such as contamination of the water supply or air pollution. One typical example of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy is the existence of cancer clusters. The great majority of them turned out to have no significance as predictions and, considering the volume, it’s actually quite likely that we can find at least a few that (seemingly ) apply to later, real events.Īlso, in Nostradamus’ writings, the name “Hister” does not refer to an actual person, but to a river called the Danube that is located in central and eastern Europe. However, when we dig a little deeper into the mystery, we can find good reasons to believe that the similarities may, in fact, be mere coincidences:įor instance, in his Les Propheties, Nostradamus wrote 942 short poems that are believed to be predictions about the future. When read carefully, there really do appear to be some striking similarities in the texts with what happened later. These quatrains are sometimes suggested to be a prediction of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and the war against Germany, events that occurred about 400 years later. He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron, When the son of Germany obeys no law.” “Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers, The greater part of the battle will be against Hister.“From the depths of the West of Europe, A young child will be born of poor people, He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop His fame will increase towards the realm of the East.”.Nostradamus, a French physician and an astrologer, wrote the following texts in his Les Propheties (1555): Here are two real-life examples to better illustrate the fallacy: Nostradamus
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