Seems that this is key. The question is what kind of sampling is broad enough to support what kind of assertion. I’m not sure if that can always be neatly determined, so you might have two sets of claims on a continuum between well-supported and totally speculative with a muddy stretch in the middle.
Yes—and if authors gave an indication of what sort of evidence they were looking at, it would not be a fallacy. It is fine to report that ‘5/5 of the X that we looked at are Y’, but the claim that ‘X are Y’ is not so fine. Most educated people (for example, science writers) seem to understand this for most cases, but drop their critical thinking when it comes to humans…
Seems that this is key. The question is what kind of sampling is broad enough to support what kind of assertion. I’m not sure if that can always be neatly determined, so you might have two sets of claims on a continuum between well-supported and totally speculative with a muddy stretch in the middle.
Yes—and if authors gave an indication of what sort of evidence they were looking at, it would not be a fallacy. It is fine to report that ‘5/5 of the X that we looked at are Y’, but the claim that ‘X are Y’ is not so fine. Most educated people (for example, science writers) seem to understand this for most cases, but drop their critical thinking when it comes to humans…