confirmation bias

This case was not on my radar, but at the very least it bears more examination. "He was nearly 2,000 miles away when the bodies were found inside the home he shared with Rowe, shot in the head. Police seized on Taylor as their sole suspect, pursuing witnesses to confirm their theory of the...

http://www.alternet.org/media/151426/why_do_people_believe_stupid_stuff%2C_even_when_they%27re_confronted_with_the_truth/?page=1

How can you tell if your reasoning for something is a rationalization or not? For example, let's say someone arrives at a belief because most of the people he's been exposed to for a couple years hold that belief, then he thinks back to examples of his past that convince him he'd ALWAYS been...

What's the difference between "cherry-picking" and "confirmation bias"? What's the difference between "cherry-picking" and "confirmation bias"? Thanks in advance.

At present in the small amount of spare time I have, I'm pulling together a heap of resources to try to write something on pseudoscience. So far I've addressed why our brains evolved the way they did, and I've suddenly come to the realisation that I have little more than conjecture on why we...

Confirmation Bias is one of my research projects right now. After our discussion on it in the thread "Why the militant atheism?" I started to wonder how such a seemingly self-destructive mechanism was selected for. The particular aspect of Confirmation Bias which I think is remarkable is this...

http://xkcd.com/c258.html I'd imagine that plenty of you would also like to join in on the last panel. :D

Seriously. I don't care which side of the "aisle" you're on, enough with using the phrase "debunk this" or anything similar. It is promoting confirmation bias in testing and investigation from the very beginning of whatever thread it titles. For the debunkers, you know all you need to do is...

Whilst reading through my newest issue of Skeptical Inquirer (which I have to find at Borders since B&N carries neither it, nor Skeptic) I stumbled across this nugget of epiphany that seem most relevant to the discussion that go on in this subforum. Its from the Comment and Opinion section: The...