In economics, anecdotal value refers to the primarily social and political value of an anecdote or anecdotal evidence in promoting understanding of a social, cultural, or economic phenomenon. While anecdotal evidence is typically disparaged as unscientific among social sciences, in the last several decades the evaluation of anecdotes has received sustained academic scrutiny from economists and scholars such as S.G. Checkland (on David Ricardo), Steven Novella, R. Charleton, Hollis Robbins, Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo, and others. These academics seek to quantify the value inherent in the deployment of anecdotes. More recently, economists studying choice models have begun assessing anecdotal value in the context of framing; Kahneman and Tversky suggest that choice models may be contingent on stories or anecdotes that frame or influence choice. [1]. As an example, consider Joseph Stalin's apocryphal quote: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic. [2]
The concept of Anecdotal Value is related to Clay Shirky's concept of cognitive surplus.[citation needed]
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See also
References
- Choices, values and frames, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 840 pp., ISBN 0521627494
- The Lancet: The Value of Anecdotes
- Telling Stories: The Epistemological Value of Anecotes
- The Role of Anecdotes in Science-Based Medicine
External links
- Clay Shirky, "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus"
Notes
- ^ Modeling Patient Decision-Making: The Role of Base-Rate and Anecdotal Information
- ^ Solovyova, Julia (October 28, 1997) Mustering Most Memorable Quips, The Moscow Times States: Russian historians have no record of the lines, "Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic," commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin. Discussing the book by Konstantin Dushenko (Константин Душенко) Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка). (This quotation probably was originated from the novel "Der schwarze Obelisk" by Erich Maria Remarque (1956): "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.")
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