Cherry picking
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Cherry picking is the act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.
The term is based on the perceived process of harvesting fruit, such as cherries. The picker would be expected to only select the ripest and healthiest fruits. An observer who only sees the selected fruit may thus wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the fruit is in such good condition.
Cherry picking can be found in many logical fallacies. For example, the "fallacy of anecdotal evidence" tends to overlook large amounts of data in favor of that known personally, while a false dichotomy picks only two options when more are available.
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[edit] Term in specific fields
[edit] Business
Cherry picking is also used to refer to business policies of picking out profitable customers from a large base.[citation needed] An example of this use is that by insuring only healthy people and refusing to insure those who were unhealthy or are likely to become unhealthy, a health insurance company can cherry pick the most profitable customers.
If an auto insurance company insured only good drivers by cherry picking them from among all drivers this would enable a company to gain an advantage over a company that insures all drivers. To prevent auto insurance companies from cherry picking only the good drivers and leaving poorer drivers without any insurance, most states in the U.S.A. require auto insurance companies to insure a certain number of drivers with poor records.[citation needed]
[edit] Statistics
Cherry picking can refer to the selection of data or data sets so a study or survey will give desired, predictable results which may be misleading or even completely contrary to actuality.[citation needed]
[edit] Software configuration management
In the jargon of software configuration management, cherry picking is used to describe the action of selecting which patches (or changesets, or commits) should be ported from one branch to another.[1][2][3]
[edit] Sports
Cherry picking in sports is the tactic of waiting close to the opponent's goal in hope of receiving the object in play (ball, puck etc) and redirecting it towards the goal. The tactic can degrade the quality of game play, so to prevent or discourage the practice, several team sports have an off-side rule. Ice hockey, for example, requires that a player not enter the offensive zone before the puck. (See Loafing.)
[edit] Australian taxation
In the 1970s and early 1980s in Australia, cherry picking was a tax avoidance scheme based on tax deductions for company contributions to a superannuation fund. Such a fund was notionally for the benefit of employees, but the benefits (the "cherries") were picked by the company or its owners.
[edit] Cherry Picking in (Political) Appointments
Cherry Picking is also a term which can be used in the context of referring to political decision making – and it is an apt term for referring to the manner in which political appointments are made. In particular, appointments for political minority groups (whatever may be the natural degree to which they are affiliated to such groups) can be influenced so as to curb Participation of said group by ensuring that candidates are cherry picked so as to conform to the will of the status quo which has the most/majority political decision making power. Given that there are often legislative frameworks designed to protect such political minority groups, cherry picking can be both explicit and implicit within various contexts. This, presumably, relates to the many different types of bias which people (and, by extension, organisations and political stakeholder and decision making bodies) are likely to exhibit.
Explicit cherry picking would go so far as to eliminate candidates or data either consciously or overtly. This may be consistent with unconscious decision making, but still requires human intervention within what might otherwise be a largely mechanised or administrative process (particularly within organisations which mask the identity of applicants so as to reduce the degree to which interference with the application process can occur). Implicit cherry picking would presumably involve limiting the flow of information so that the information channels (which are often social and based upon certain inevitable familial-like connections) have a highly biased effect so as to ensure that only specific candidates with a particular background are likely to find their way past the application stage of a related political appointment process.
The effect of these various types of Cherry picking are that only particular political, ideological, etc... perspectives are ever aired during more general political decision making processes. The degree of cherry picking exhibited by an individual can be seen to be quite insignificant and marginal in comparison to the degree of cherry picking that an organisation's structure and administrative system would entail (certain facets of an organisations structure, including linguistic barriers, barriers related to cognitive function requirements needed to interact with the organisation, bureaucratic barriers which may deliberately or accidentally increase the perceived value of the organisations administrative faculties can be important for 'extended' cherry picking).
The degree of cherry picking could be objectively quantified via simple demographic analyses of the degree of stratification within the various parts of an organisation – within capitalist societies, there would be greater correlation between earnings and statistical parameters such as gender, ethnicity, social background, the parental earnings of employees, etc...within a given organisation than when compared to other organisations which perform similar roles in different cultural, social or national contexts. However, one should not let earnings obsfuscate other parameters (such as wealth via house ownership, health insurance, contractual arrangements which ensure job security, the attractiveness of frontline staff lookism, which would also enable one to approximately quantify the extent of cherry picking based upon parameters which might otherwise be perceived as being unrelated to job role performance).
Note that, if one considers the notion of cherry picking in a mechanistic sense, not all forms of cherry picking are to criticised (in fact, cherry picking based upon job role capability is to be welcomed for the continued sustenance and survival of an organisation). This form of cherry picking would have the tendency of increasing (via application based selection) the average IQ of an organisations employees (cherry picking based upon cognitive ability), but the interference of other types of cherry picking would make themselves apparent via a lack of this effect[citation needed].
[edit] Acceptability
When a person is assigned to advocate a particular position, then cherry picking might be seen as entirely appropriate. For example, defense lawyers are free to present any evidence supporting the innocence of their client. By contrast, while prosecutors are expected to present the strongest case consistent with the facts, they are not permitted to suppress evidence that might support the innocence of the defendant.
Additionally, in common law, guilt has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt and thus the introduction 'cherry picked' evidence by the defence is regarded as entirely appropriate, because, while such data may not prove something in general, it may be successful in introducing the needed minimum level of doubt to successfully defend the case.
However, when a person with a supposedly neutral position cherry picks, for example journalists, scientists, and judges, that is generally regarded as inappropriate.
[edit] References
- ^ Meier, J. D.; Jason Taylor; Alex Mackman; Prashant Bansode; Kevin Jones (November 21, 2007). Team Development with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server: Patterns and Practices. Microsoft Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-7356-2571-6.
- ^ Wingerd, Laura (November 18, 2005). Practical Perforce. O'Reilly Media, Inc.. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-596-10185-5.
- ^ Loeliger, Jon (May 15, 2009). "Using git cherry-pick". Version Control with Git. O'Reilly Media, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-596-52012-0.
