General Picking

The standard form of cherry-picking: selectively choosing data or examples that support a general claim while ignoring a significant portion of relevant, contrary data. It’s the most common method of constructing a misleading yet seemingly reasonable argument, where the selected evidence is truthful but the resulting picture is false because it’s incomplete.

Example: "The ad used general picking to sell the supplement: 'Studies show increased vitality!' It picked the two small, company-funded studies with positive results and ignored the fifty independent studies showing no effect beyond a placebo. The general claim was built on a specially picked foundation."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026

Special Picking

A more insidious form of selection that focuses on extraordinary, anomalous, or extreme cases and presents them as representative of the whole. It often involves picking the most emotionally charged or bizarre examples to provoke outrage or fear, making rational assessment of the typical case impossible.

Example: "The debate turned into special picking when he argued against immigration by focusing solely on the one, highly publicized crime committed by an immigrant last year. By specially picking this extreme, traumatic outlier, he painted a picture of universal threat, drowning out all statistical reality."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026

Bending Picking

The selective curation and presentation of data in a way that not only omits contrary evidence, but actively twists or misrepresents the chosen data points to force them to fit a predetermined narrative. It goes beyond cherry-picking into data-wrangling; it’s putting the facts on a rack to stretch them into the desired shape. Charts with manipulated axes, quotes taken grotesquely out of context, or statistics presented with misleading comparisons are all tools of the bending picker.

*Example: "The lobbyist's report was a masterclass in bending picking. He took a study showing a 2% risk reduction in a specific lab mouse model, presented it as a '20% relative improvement' on a logarithmically-scaled graph, and declared the chemical 'virtually risk-free' for humans."*

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026