Confirmation bias is a type of statistical bias describing the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. In inductive inference, confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study. To compensate for this observed human tendency, the scientific method is constructed so that we must try to disprove our hypotheses. See falsifiability. Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out a ...

Read more here: » Confirmation bias: Encyclopedia - Confirmation bias

Read more here: » Communal reinforcement: Encyclopedia - Communal reinforcement

A sample is biased if some members of the population are more likely to be chosen in the sample than others. A biased sample will generally give you a misestimate of the quantity being estimated. For example, if your sample contains members with a higher or lower value of the quantity being estimated, the outcome will be higher or lower than the true value. A famous case of what can go wrong when using a biased sample is found in the 1936 US presidential election polls. The Literary Digest held a poll that forecast that Alfred ...

See also:

Bias statistics, Bias statistics - Biased sample, Bias statistics - Biased estimator, Bias statistics - External link

Read more here: » Bias statistics: Encyclopedia II - Bias statistics - Biased sample

Bible codes, also known as Torah codes, are words, phrases and clusters of words and phrases that some people believe are meaningful and exist intentionally in coded form in the text of the Bible. These codes were made famous by the book The Bible Code, which claims that these codes can predict the future. All of these claims are strongly denied by skeptics and many religious groups. Bible code - Overview. The primary method by which purportedly meaningful messages are extracted is the Equi ...

Including:

Bible code - Overview Bible code - History Bible code - Criticism

Read more here: » Bible code: Encyclopedia - Bible code

Anthropic bias is the bias arising when "your evidence is biased by observation selection effects," according to philosopher Nick Bostrom. This is an extreme generalization of the confirmation bias and the cognitive bias, involving not only mind-set, memory and methodology, but the whole way in which one sees oneself as an entity investigating an environment. The original statement of the problems related to anthropic bias is due to Eugene Wigner's 1960 paper, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physi ...

Read more here: » Anthropic bias: Encyclopedia - Anthropic bias

Ley lines are alignments of a number of places of geographical interest, such as ancient megaliths. Their existence was first suggested in 1921 by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, whose book The Old Straight Track first brought the phenomenon to the attention of the wider public. The existence of these apparently remarkable alignments between sites is easily demonstrated. However, the causes of these alignments are disputed. There are three major schools of thought: Anthropological: According ...

Including:

Ley line - The anthropological approach: Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track Ley line - The New Age approach: magical and holy lines Ley line - The skeptical approach: chance alignments Ley line - Are alignments and ley lines the same thing? Ley line - Controversy Ley line - Scientific investigation Ley line - Compare with

Read more here: » Ley line: Encyclopedia - Ley line

Another kind of bias in statistics does not involve biased samples, but does involve the use of a statistic whose average value differs from the value of the quantity being estimated. Suppose we are trying to estimate the parameter θ using an estimator (that is, some function of the observed data). Then the bias of is defined to be In words, this would be "the expected value of the estimator minus the true value θSee also:

Bias statistics, Bias statistics - Biased sample, Bias statistics - Biased estimator, Bias statistics - External link

Read more here: » Bias statistics: Encyclopedia II - Bias statistics - Biased estimator

An epistemological paradigm shift was called a scientific revolution by epistemologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which ...

See also:

Paradigm shift, Paradigm shift - Kuhnian Paradigm Shifts, Paradigm shift - Examples of paradigm shifts in science, Paradigm shift - Other Uses

Read more here: » Paradigm shift: Encyclopedia II - Paradigm shift - Kuhnian Paradigm Shifts

The term "paradigm shift" has found uses in other contexts, representing the notion of a major change in a certain thought-pattern — a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing: Margaret Mead, noted anthropologist, shows a flashlight to the indigenous New Guinea people. People blind since birth are suddenly enabled to see. British underground philosopher Michael Swann advocat ...

See also:

Paradigm shift, Paradigm shift - Kuhnian Paradigm Shifts, Paradigm shift - Examples of paradigm shifts in science, Paradigm shift - Other Uses

Read more here: » Paradigm shift: Encyclopedia II - Paradigm shift - Other Uses

The primary method by which purportedly meaningful messages are extracted is the Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS). To obtain an ELS from a text, choose a starting point (any letter) and a skip (a number, possibly negative). Then, beginning at the starting point, select letters from the text at equal spacing as given by the skip. For example, the bold letters in this sentence form an ELS for the word SAFEST. (The skip is - ...

See also:

Bible code, Bible code - Overview, Bible code - History, Bible code - Criticism

Read more here: » Bible code: Encyclopedia II - Bible code - Overview

As far as is known, the 13th-century Spanish Rabbi Bachya ben Asher was the first to describe an ELS in the Bible. His 4-letter example related to the traditional zero-point of the Jewish calendar. Over the following centuries there are some hints that the ELS technique was known, but few definite examples have been found from before the middle of the 20th century. At this point many examples were found by the Slovakian Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl and published by his students after his death in 1957. Nevertheless, the practice remained kno ...

See also:

Bible code, Bible code - Overview, Bible code - History, Bible code - Criticism

Read more here: » Bible code: Encyclopedia II - Bible code - History

The primary objection advanced against Bible codes of the Drosnin variety is that similar patterns can be found in books other than the Bible. Although the probability of an ELS in a random place being a meaningful word is low, there are so many possible starting points and skips that many such words are expected to appear. Responding to an explicit challenge from Drosnin, who claimed that only the Bible could yield ELS, Australian mathematician Brendan McKay found many ELS letter arrays in Moby Dick that contain ELSs related to moder ...

See also:

Bible code, Bible code - Overview, Bible code - History, Bible code - Criticism

Read more here: » Bible code: Encyclopedia II - Bible code - Criticism

The primary objection advanced against Bible codes of the Drosnin variety is that similar patterns can be found in books other than the Bible. Although the probability of an ELS in a random place being a meaningful word is small, there are so many possible starting points and skips that many such words are expected to appear. Responding to an explicit challenge from Drosnin, who claimed that only the Bible could yield ELS, Australian mathematician Brendan McKay found many ELS letter arrays in Moby Dick that contain ELSs related to mod ...

See also:

Bible code, Bible code - Overview, Bible code - History, Bible code - Criticism

Read more here: » Bible code: Encyclopedia II - Bible code - Criticism

Causes of miscarriages of justice include: non-disclosure of evidence by police or prosecution confirmation bias on the part of investigators fabrication of evidence poor identification overestimation of the evidential value of expert testimony contaminated evidence faulty forensic tests false confessions due to police pressure or psychological instability misdirection by a judge during trial perjurious evidence by the real guilty party or his or her accomplices false ev ...

See also:

Miscarriage of justice, Miscarriage of justice - General issues, Miscarriage of justice - United Kingdom, Miscarriage of justice - Scotland, Miscarriage of justice - Ireland, Miscarriage of justice - Australia, Miscarriage of justice - Canada, Miscarriage of justice - New Zealand, Miscarriage of justice - United States of America, Miscarriage of justice - France, Miscarriage of justice - Soviet Union, Miscarriage of justice - Home Secretaries and miscarriage of justice

Read more here: » Miscarriage of justice: Encyclopedia II - Miscarriage of justice - General issues

The following is a list of the more commonly studied cognitive biases Hindsight bias sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, is the inclination to see past events as being predictable Fundamental attribution error the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. Confirmation bias the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms o ...

See also:

Cognitive bias, Cognitive bias - Overview, Cognitive bias - Types of cognitive biases

Read more here: » Cognitive bias: Encyclopedia II - Cognitive bias - Types of cognitive biases

The concept of ley lines was first propounded by Alfred Watkins. On June 30, 1921, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire, and went riding around near some hills in the vicinity of Bredwardine when he noted many of the footpaths therein seemed to connect one hilltop to another in a straight line. He was studying a map when he noticed that a number of significant places were in alignment. "The whole thing came to me in a flash," he would later explain to his son. Some people have portrayed this as being some sort of mystical experience ...

See also:

Ley line, Ley line - The anthropological approach: Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track, Ley line - The New Age approach: magical and holy lines, Ley line - The skeptical approach: chance alignments, Ley line - Are alignments and ley lines the same thing?, Ley line - Controversy, Ley line - Scientific investigation, Ley line - Compare with

Read more here: » Ley line: Encyclopedia II - Ley line - The anthropological approach: Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track

Watkins' theories have been adapted by later writers. Some of his ideas were taken up by the occultist Dion Fortune who featured them in her 1936 novel The Goat-footed God. Since then, ley lines have become the subject of many magical and mystical theories. The two British dowsers, Captain Robert Boothby and Reginald Smith of the British Museum have linked the appearance of ley-lines with underground streams, and magnetic currents. Ley-spotter / Dowser Underwood conducted various investigations and claimed that crossings of 'ne ...

See also:

Ley line, Ley line - The anthropological approach: Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track, Ley line - The New Age approach: magical and holy lines, Ley line - The skeptical approach: chance alignments, Ley line - Are alignments and ley lines the same thing?, Ley line - Controversy, Ley line - Scientific investigation, Ley line - Compare with

Read more here: » Ley line: Encyclopedia II - Ley line - The New Age approach: magical and holy lines

Some skeptics have suggested that ley lines are a product of human fancy. Watkins' discovery happened at a time when Ordnance Survey maps were being marketed for the leisure market, making them reasonably easy and cheap to obtain; this may have been a contributing factor to the popularity of ley line theories. One suggestion is that thanks to the high density of historic and prehistoric sites in Britain and other parts of Europe, that finding straight lines that "connect" sites (usually selected to make them "fit") is trivial, and may ...

See also:

Ley line, Ley line - The anthropological approach: Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track, Ley line - The New Age approach: magical and holy lines, Ley line - The skeptical approach: chance alignments, Ley line - Are alignments and ley lines the same thing?, Ley line - Controversy, Ley line - Scientific investigation, Ley line - Compare with

Read more here: » Ley line: Encyclopedia II - Ley line - The skeptical approach: chance alignments

The existence of the observed alignments is not controversial. Both believers in magical and ancient theories of ley lines and skeptics of these theories agree that these alignments exist between megaliths and ancient sites. Most skeptics believe that their null hypothesis of ley-line-like alignments being due to random chance is consistent with all known evidence. They believe that this removes the need to explain these alignments in any other way. Some Chaos Magicians have views consistent with this, and claim this is in accord with ...

See also:

Ley line, Ley line - The anthropological approach: Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track, Ley line - The New Age approach: magical and holy lines, Ley line - The skeptical approach: chance alignments, Ley line - Are alignments and ley lines the same thing?, Ley line - Controversy, Ley line - Scientific investigation, Ley line - Compare with

Read more here: » Ley line: Encyclopedia II - Ley line - Are alignments and ley lines the same thing?

The demonstration of the plausibility of the current evidence under the null hypothesis is not a formal disproof of ley line claims. However, it does make skeptics likely to consider ley line theories as unsupported by the current evidence. Most skeptics would be willing to reconsider the hypothesis of ley lines if there was non-anecdotal evidence of physical, geomagnetic or archeological features that actually lay along the paths of ley lines. Skeptics believe that no such ...

See also:

Ley line, Ley line - The anthropological approach: Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track, Ley line - The New Age approach: magical and holy lines, Ley line - The skeptical approach: chance alignments, Ley line - Are alignments and ley lines the same thing?, Ley line - Controversy, Ley line - Scientific investigation, Ley line - Compare with

Read more here: » Ley line: Encyclopedia II - Ley line - Controversy