Anecdotal Evidence - What Value Does It Have?

Anecdotal evidence is everywhere these days. How reliable is it? Should you follow the advice in the garden? Why do we believe anecdotal evidence?

http://www.gardenmyths.com

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[Deleted Profile] (edited 9 years ago)
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9 years ago
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- spaceghoti
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  In social sciences, yes. But such body of knowledge is careful to examine such testimony to remove human bias. Just because a thousand people testify to what they claim to be a miracle doesn't necessarily mean it was a miracle.
  
  Bad science tends to get filtered out over time, even when publishers take shortcuts. Bad science gets scrutinized and exposed as fraud. It's true, science publication seems overly concerned with competition which makes the science suffer, but peer review ultimately weeds it out.
  
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  - [Deleted Profile] (edited 9 years ago)
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    9 years ago
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    - spaceghoti
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      However, that's not an issue of anecdotal evidence being unreliable. That's an issue of pharmaceutical companies choosing to place profit motives above consumer safety. They're not putting patients at risk because they believed what they were told, they're putting patients at risk because the payoff is greater than the risk.
      
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        9 years ago
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        spaceghoti
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        The peer review process there is broken for completely separate reasons, though. It's not relevant to the topic of anecdotal evidence. It's not a failure of the scientific method, it's a failure of corporate regulation.
        
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