Fooling ourselves and others: confirmation bias and the trustworthiness of qualitative research – Part 1 (the threats)

What is it about?

The implicit epistemic vice of ‘confirmation bias’ is widely regarded as undermining the trustworthiness of professional research endeavours, political discourse, policy formulation and implementation, and everyday reasoning. But from a variety of perspectives there is also an extensive literature which denies that this bias exists or that it is problematic. Focusing on qualitative analysis of causality, Part 1 first describes the major features and manifestations of confirmation bias and the threats to trustworthiness attributed to it. Secondly, it illustrates the adverse consequences of the bias through an analyses three confirmation biased based studies. Part 2 (to follow) describes and critiques three ways in which the threats from that bias have been dismissed.

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