What are the disadvantages of anecdotal records?
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Disadvantages of anecdotal records are that they lack a statistical basis for probability. As a result, the meaning of an anecdote cannot be generalized to wider populations.
=> For example, say a person reports that he or she went on a diet and lost five pounds in one month. From this anecdote there is not enough information provided to know if this is realistic possibility from one individual perspective let alone from population perspective as well as result seen by others who have tried the same regimen.
The problem with anecdotes isn’t about what they can show us – it’s about what they can’t show us. They’re just too damned limited in scope and power to do much more than give us hope for ourselves and misery for those we’ve left behind.
Answer:
Because of the subjective nature of anecdotal evidence, it is not always reliable. To illustrate this, imagine you’re in a room with 10 people and someone yells “fire!”. You could say that 8 out of 10 people responded out of fear and only 2 responded because they knew there was no fire (it was all in their head!). With these types of data we can never hope to make conclusions about what actually happens in the world. We also don’t know how many times someone yelled “fire!” and nobody reacted. Finally, if we were talking about NASA’s Challenger rocket disaster then for sure 100% (all ten) people would yell “fire!” if everyone knew something was wrong because plume gases didn’t match blue skies.
Few disadvantage of anecdotal records are:
• Evidence is not reliable
• Stories are biased and incomplete
• Memory limitations make details unclear