Paul Okami quoted:
> "Any data set may be badgered into submission."

This sounds like one I turned up on Google:
"If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything."
(attrib. Fred Menger, Emory University)

Some more:

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat every problem as
a nail."
--- Abraham Maslow

"The plural of anecdote is not data." (variously attributed)

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one
begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit
facts." (Sherlock Holmes -- allegedly)

Okay, I'm straying a bit from the original request for great quotes from
psychology, but we can't leave this topic without some choice aphorisms
about psychoanalysis:

"Psychoanalysis is the disease it purports to cure."
--Karl Kraus

"A successful pseudoscience is a great intellectual achievement. Its study
is as instructive and worth undertaking as that of a genuine one."
-- Frank Cioffi, "Freud and the Idea of a Pseudoscience" [1970], reprinted
in Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience (Open Court, 1998), p. 115

"A lie is a disinterested false statement propagated by someone not
Freud."
-- Frank Cioffi [1972], "Wollheim on Freud", ibid, p. 148.

"There are lies, damned lies, and psychoanalytic case histories."
-- Allen Esterson, �Myths, Damned Myths, and Psychoanalytic Case
Histories�:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=58 

Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=57
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=58
http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/1_gesamt_en.html

---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to