by Alex Edmans | 3 Jan 2025 | A fact is not data, A statement is not fact, Confirmation bias, Data is not evidence, Evidence is not proof
Chris van Tulleken’s “Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … And Why Can’t We Stop?”, on the dangers of Ultra-Processed Food (UPF), was one of the most successful books of 2023. It was a #1 Sunday Times Bestseller and an Economist, Daily...
by Alex Edmans | 25 Jul 2024 | A statement is not fact, Confirmation bias, Data is not evidence
In March 2022, my LinkedIn feed lit up with people sharing this article: It is by Reuters, a highly-respected news source, on a report by Arabesque, an asset manager and data provider I greatly admire and wrote about in Grow the Pie. It was taken at face value and...
by Alex Edmans | 2 Jan 2024 | Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias leads us to make up excuses to dismiss facts we don’t like. If our favourite politician gets elected and the economy tanks, we’d argue it would have done worse had she not been in charge. Or we’d protest that we need to wait another year before we...
by Alex Edmans | 16 Dec 2023 | A statement is not fact, Confirmation bias, Data is not evidence, Diversity, Evidence is not proof
My LinkedIn feed came alive with this post: Francesca Gino is the Harvard Business School professor accused of faking data in her research. HBS is conducting an investigation into the matter and I am reserving judgement until its outcome; this post is on...
by Alex Edmans | 1 Dec 2023 | Confirmation bias
‘Go with your gut’, ‘Follow your first impression’, ‘Obey your hunches’. We frequently hear this advice, and Malcolm Gladwell wrote a successful book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, on the value of heeding your instincts. But a downside is that it...
by Alex Edmans | 25 Nov 2023 | Confirmation bias
A wealth of evidence demonstrates how people suffer from confirmation bias, but most of it is on ordinary people. Surely intelligence is a cure? Smarter cookies might better appreciate the logic in a counterargument, and notice defects in data even if supports their...
