# Cherry picking

*Also called: Suppressed evidence, incomplete evidence*

- **Cluster:** Evidence and sampling — The data that was gathered, and the data that was not
- **Page:** https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/cherry-picking/
- **In Arabic:** https://fallacy.wiki/ar/fallacy/cherry-picking.md
- **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## What it is

Presenting only the data that supports a position while leaving out the rest.

## In the wild

> This one quarter was strong, so the strategy works.

## How to answer it

Ask for the full series, including the periods that were left out.

## Origin and naming

The English idiom 'cherry-pick' comes from fruit picking: take the ripest cherries, leave the rest on the tree. In logic the older name is the fallacy of suppressed evidence — the half-truth offered as the whole truth. It is the standard operating procedure of selective quotation in both advertising and polemic.

## More places it shows up

- A supplement ad cites the one small trial that found a benefit and never mentions the four larger trials that found none.
- A city official defends a traffic policy by quoting the single winter week with fewer accidents, cropping out the eleven months that came after.
- A pundit claims a country's economy is booming by pointing to its stock index, leaving out wages, inflation, and the currency slide.
- A product manager announces 'engagement is up' and shows daily active users for the launch week, cutting the chart before the drop that followed.

## How to spot it

- The chart ends or starts at a suspiciously neat date. Ask what was on either side of the cut.
- Only one study, one week, one metric is ever named. The plural never shows up.
- When the missing context is supplied, the story quietly changes tone from triumph to 'well, it depends'.

## Nearby

- [Texas sharpshooter](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/texas-sharpshooter.md)
- [Survivorship bias](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/survivorship.md)
- [Anecdotal evidence](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/anecdotal.md)

## Read more

- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking)
- [The Fallacy Files](https://www.fallacyfiles.org/onesided.html)

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From fallacy.wiki — a bilingual field guide to 91 logical fallacies, published by phi holdings. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse freely with attribution to fallacy.wiki.