Meditations and Learnings

Meditations and Learnings

The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is more esoteric than others, applying to data use in a debate - involving cherry-picking a data cluster to support the argument, ignoring that which refutes the point.

John Venn coined this ‘false cause’ fallacy after a marksman shooting randomly at barns and then painting bullseye targets around the spot where the most bullet holes appear, making it appear as if he’s a good shot. Clusters naturally appear by chance but don’t necessarily indicate that there is a causal relationship.