Knowledge is a continuous process! Evolving and being open to new ideas and explanations are key. Life has been and will always be a constant change.

Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak, thank you for taking time out to send a reply and your answer is very deep meaning. I think you are agreeing with my point. Are you familiar with the term 'confirmation bias' from before? Have you read any of Rolf Dobelli's books? Good luck with your research in Saudi!!

Mike, thanks again for taking the time out to send me that link and I will read it later. Rolf in a later chapter mentions a famous piece of toast that apparently resembles the face of Jesus, and when I searched about it I found the following interesting description about face pareidolia;

'Jesus on toast? This image may be doctored, but a phenomenon called pareidolia regularly tricks people into seeing faces in burnt bread. ... Now, new research reveals the brain processes that underlie these facial false alarms, a phenomenon called "face pareidolia." The findings suggest that expectations matter'.

Perhaps we need a comparable name where researchers see significance and effectiveness in treatments where it doesn't exist e.g. 'data significania'.

Well what do you think. Good luck with your research!!!

I personally believe that confirmation bias is inherently and deeply rooted in our mind: some theories of evolutionary psychology suggest that this bias may serve to quicker interpret reality, thus allowing individuals to save mental energies with cognitive shortcuts, and, probably, to influence others in such a way as to match our view and beliefs, thus ultimately creating more cohesive social organizations. Of course, researchers are not an exempt, since they are human beings like others, although their scientific education should theoretically provide them with more self-awareness of their way of thinking. However, for the above-mentioned reasons, facing clear dis-confirming evidence can be instinctively perceived as troublesome in research practice, and confirmation bias may prevail over an objective evaluation, with obvious detrimental consequences (attitude polarization, perseverance of false beliefs and correlations, biased reviews...).

I think that two relatively easy-to-apply strategies to tackle this issue would be:

• Empowering self-awareness: to acknowledge that confirmation bias tends to constantly and markedly influence our interpretation of reality.
• Improving analytical thinking: to develop the capability to look at decisions/hypotheses/facts from different perspectives (see, for example, the exercise called "Six Thinking Hats": https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm).

Hopefully, the specific training of researchers will take all these elements into full consideration in the future.

Further readings:

Article What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?

Article Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises

Kenneth Monaghan Kenneth Monaghan

The confirmation bias affects the way people conduct scientific research. For example, scientists often demonstrate a confirmation bias in the way they conduct research when they selectively analyze data in a manner that allows them to confirm their preferred hypotheses.

I am afraid Confirmation bias is inevitable since it works outside research too. If one doesn't like a person, normally the disliking grows whatever the person does. It's probably a part of the human mind, we have to be aware of it all the time. The need to constantly revise and reproduce certain experiments and observations might come from Thermodynamics, further verification of information and acquiring higher accuracy need ever higher energy input.

I would say, a partial remedy would be the scientific community since normally there will be a group with opposite confirmation bias to one's own, who would criticize the findings and interpretations. I notice that a lot in selenium research. The problem is acuter in emerging fields though where everybody may hold similar positions.

Michele, once again thank you for that tremendous contribution. Everything is well explained. I love Edward De Bono's work and have used the 6 hats method of getting students to generate ideas and it makes complete sense. I also often use the 60 word generator that he suggests so go around with a piece of paper and 60 nouns in my pocket for this purpose.

The main point here is to recognise as a research lead that confirmation bias exists in all its glory in research as in everyday life and to alert students as suggested.

I will try and read the links at another time but thank you for making the effort.

Nirmala S.V.S.G , thank you for contributing and what a fantastic RG score you have. You seem to agree with the idea that confirmation bias exists and I think Michele earlier has made a very valid point that knowledge of this should inform research leads to introduce awareness among their students not to be biased by this. Good luck with your research. Have you any suggestions yourself how to diminish this 'Confirmation Bias'??

Nikolay, we definitely should try and have that chat when back in College (2 metres apart of course). Thanks for making that contribution.

I agree with what you say and of course these hidden unconscious opinions/biases that each person have is an interesting area of research that I would like to explore in rehabilitation e.g. as an older person who gets a stroke, subconsciously that person likely believes that it is a natural part of aging and is more inclined to accept their fate of disability if it occurs. I have the feeling and I would love to study this that if we investigated a person's unconscious biases and perhaps attitude to stereotyping and control/power that we could tailor rehabilitation better and act to educate/motivate patients in a better way.

Your ideas are interesting and of course I am only familiar with research into clinical health etc. Empasising that negative results from clinical trials are equally as important as positive ones and ensuring that negative results are published is an important step and the registering of clinical trials is starting to assist this process as well.

Many thanks Ken

Confirmation bias is perhaps the best known and most widely accepted notion of the inferential error to come out of the literature on human reasoning.

Please have a look at the following link:

Article Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises

Confirmation bias is quite hard to avoid as a human being. All the same, the processes of science are at least in part designed to minimise it. That's why we have to be able to justify our results, conclusions, methods etc objectively, subject to anonymous peer review. It doesn't make us researchers perfectly unbiased, but probably more so than most people, as in most walks of life you are not called upon to justify your opinions by others with a high level of expertise in the specific issue.

If you are interested, Kahneman & Tversky's 1970s work on cognitive biases is a class, and quite accessible.

Harasit, thank you for taking time out to reply to my discussion. The article you attached was very interesting. The conclusion is quite concerning

' Many have written about this bias, and it appears to be sufficiently strong and pervasive that one is led to wonder whether the bias, by itself, might account for a significant fraction of the disputes, altercations, and misun- derstandings that occur among individuals, groups, and nations'.

As we said above, its best to ensure that students are alerted to this bias when starting research projects and good to emphasise that negative findings are just as important as positive ones, and that the point of a PhD is to understand the research process as much as finding results.

Have you any suggestions how to reduce 'Confirmation Bias' yourself?

Jonathan, thank you again for contributing and your point is a good one. Rolf Dobelli, in this interesting book 'The Art of Thinking Clearly' does mention statistics as the 'Science of Risk' and you are correct, we have introduced a system in research to ensure that biases are decreased.

Jonathan, my group and myself personally am very interested in Neuroplasticity and the unconscious psychology underlying and possibly reducing the potential for rehabilitation in patients. Can I alert you to 2 brilliant books from Norman Doidge that I think you will find hugely interesting regarding Neuroplasticity and some interesting case studies and these books have been the foundation for some of our groups thinking and projects over the past few years. Treat yourself to these some time!

Hope all well in Strathclyde!!

It is often an unconscious tendency. I tend to guard against where possible. Researchers do have some fixed notions that become accepted wisdom then guide expectations, perpetuating bias.

Neil, thank you again for contributing to these discussions. I see you were replying earlier to another one that I posted about what to call myself now I have a PhD etc...

This has been a good discussion and it appears to be generally accepted that 'Confirmation Bias' is almost impossible to eliminate, in society in general and also in research settings.

Can I ask you Neil, how do you go about 'guarding' against this bias from your own experience? Ken

I recall a quote (possibly from Albert Einstein): “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.”

We can overcome most of the biases (of any kind) if we could just learn to be childish again!!!

Being a post graduate student, I had the same issue about not believing what I see in my model results. I was keep arguing myself, that this cannot be true according to my mind mapping that I had when I was writing the proposal. It is a difficult task to set the mind to believe something that is not agreeing with the theoretical hypothesis or image that we had at our proposal writing stage. However, later I have realised that this task should be a flexible one. Initial theoretical hypothesis makes the project to be evolved while the analysis of results should be done in open mindset to change the plan at any stage. As per my understanding, the outcome and how to get in there is the final thing that the audience is going to see and that would be the new finding. Therefore, I think the project should be conducted in an iterative approach at least starting from the second year of the PhD program.