Disagree...and do it loud. It pays.

The fallacy of the example or how what happened to your grandmother does not count.

How many times have you been offered a testimonial or "personal story" to reinforce an argument...? or read a piece of news of the sort "all in the town are happy with the Major, however Mr. John Doe disagrees saying that..."? Many times it is not clear why the opinion or experience of that person is more relevant  (or at all) than the rest of the people in the same group or how that opinion is a reflection of a significant share of the population of the town/region/country.


For exampple, You have probably heard the news about the recent  criticism of the Obama administration to cancel the moon base program, which made front news in several major media outlets like the BBC.

Most of the media cited Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, as saying that the decision was "catastrophic".

Without entering into the politics of the decision or if it is a wise one, I would like to focus on the numbers around these news. The article does not indicate why Mr. Lovell´s opinion is more valid that those of other astronauts, neither is cited that he is talking for part or the entire US astronaut community.

My point: how relevant is this "individual" opinion when given no point of reference.

According to the the Wikipedia, "Twenty-four of the Apollo program astronauts left Earth's orbit and flew around the Moon (Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 did not leave low Earth orbit).
Twelve of these astronauts walked on the Moon's surface."
That means that Obama´s decision has been criticized by 1 of 24  of all US astronauts.

Then the title could be written (to much less effect, of course) to "4% of the astronauts" consider the decision of the Obama administration about the Moon program as catastrophic"

Or, if you are part of the Obama staff, you could always write "96% of the astronauts do not have a negative opinion of the decision of the Obama administration about the Moon program."

More on this topic tomorrow.