Quote mining - RationalWiki

Quote mining is the deceitful tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner’s viewpoint or to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme or hold positions they don’t in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize.¹ It’s a way of lying. This tactic is widely used among Young Earth Creationists in an attempt to discredit evolution.

edit Prime examples

See also Popular quote mines for a list of further examples.

The following quote, mentioned in New Scientist, has been used in an attempt to discredit evolution:²

""In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.3

However, the quote leaves out the very next sentence, which not only provides context, but shows the author’s point of view much more accurately:

""This does not mean that the theory of evolution is unproven.

The article later goes on to state that:

""So what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the “fossil evidence”, that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy.

edit Darwin

Another famous example, possibly one of the most famous examples of quote mining, is the following misquotation of Charles Darwin, where the bold section is often presented without including the rest of the quote.

""To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hard ly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.

—(Darwin 1872, 143-144)4

As may be seen, the quote has been taken out of context to give it the opposite meaning, thus appearing to support a different conclusion from that in the original article. Bolder quote miners may actually use ellipsis to omit material that contradicts their point of view even in the middle of a sentence or paragraph,⁵ safe in the knowledge that their audience will not look up the full quote. ⁶

Supporters of this dishonest tactic often defend themselves against accusations of quote mining by stating that only supporters of evolution use the term, therefore it is invalid.⁷ However, this is largely because the primary group using these tactics, strenuously avoided in academic circles, are Young Earth Creationists, therefore their opponents will most often be the ones leveling the charge. This says less about the validity of the term as the desire to cling to a spurious tactic when few, if any, other arguments are available.

As a result of widespread use of quote mining in YEC circles, several sites⁸ have been set up as “quote mines”, providing lists of mined quotes without the need to actually go to the source material. Most users of these quotes have never read the original source material, and would likely be hard pressed to actually find copies.⁹

edit Fahrenheit 9/11

A classic and definitive example of quote world-mining-companies.blogspot.comes in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore excerpts a speech by Condoleeza Rice, where she says:

""Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11

At which point the camera cuts away, the audience laughs and thinks that Rice is being deceptive in trying to argue that al Qaeda and Iraq were jointly involved in planning 9/11. The rest of the speech continues:

Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It's not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York. This is a great terrorist, international terrorist network that is determined to defeat freedom. It has perverted Islam from a peaceful religion into one in which they call on it for violence. And they’re all linked. And Iraq is a central front because, if and when, and we will, we change the nature of Iraq to a place that is peaceful and democratic and prosperous in the heart of the Middle East, you will begin to change the Middle East….

Rice did try to place the blame for 9/11 on Iraq by declaring it “a central front” of a “great terrorist, international terrorist network,” however stated that Saddam was not directly involved in 9/11. When Moore cited only one part out of context, he failed to include the entire statement where Rice says Saddam didn’t plan 9/11 but actually is part of the terrorist conspiracy that caused 9/11 while not actually being involved (see: doublethink). It is also worth noting that the speech was made in November 2003, so it is disingenuous for Moore to argue that it was a part of “drumming up public support for the war” which started in March 2003¹⁰.

edit Climategate

In which leaked e-mails were copiously quote mined in order to insinuate scientists were using “tricks” to “hide the decline.” In fact, this wasn’t just quote mining choice phrases out of context, it involved actively removing the explanation of what “hide the decline” even meant. SPOILER ALERT: It didn’t mean “covering up” or “faking data” but something far more boring – simply counteracting data that was known to be wrong.

edit Quote mining in action

For those wishing to see more quote mining in action, the Conservapedia article on evolution makes extensive use of quote mining and is an excellent illustration of this devious practice.¹¹

More excellent examples of quote mining can be found in our article about the “leader’s guide” released by the producers of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Some notable mined nuggets:

edit Quote Mining Index – QMI

In his book The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins jokingly suggested that you could create a Quote Mining Index (QMI) by calculating the ratio of the number of times a quote is mined versus the number of times it is quoted in full (or when context is also quoted) – using Google search results as a proxy for how many times the quotes appear. For example, his quote,

""It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.

returns 1,250 hits on Google. Whilst the next sentence:

""Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this does not represent a very large gap in the fossil record.

receives only 63 hits. That is 19.8 quote mines to every “legitimate” use of the quote, or a QMI of 19.8.

edit Quote mining the Bible

No, you don’t say!

Biblical quote mining is rampant among theologians, especially Christian fundamentalists. Taking advantage of how many authors and editors that created the Bible left behind many contradictions and other situations where the Bible can be quoted against itself (sometimes even within the same book!), Christian writers have often decontexted Biblical verses to get whatever twisted interpretation they can out of them; for example, Psalm 37:4¹² has been used to justify name it and claim it theology.

As the Bible says:¹³

edit Quote Mining News

Consapiracy Theorist, being completely baseless, need to resort to this to give the illusion of overwhelming amount of evidence. By doing this you can do things like: Make the UN announce an International Court, announce a Global Currency, and Make Obama announce a New World Order by quoting him saying the “Old order” is not working and that they need a “new order”¹⁴

edit Other evangelistic quote-mining

Some Christian groups have selectively quoted Albert Einstein and Richard Dawkins for evangelistic purposes.¹⁵

edit Quote mines (external links)

These places have done all the hard work for you, so all you need to do is cut and paste to prove evolution is wrong, etc.

edit See also

1. ↑ If you’re good, you can also pretend your fellow loonies said nice things rather than nasty things.
2. ↑ Conservapedia – Talk:Theory of Evolution/Archive 1
3. ↑ New Scientist, vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831 Mark Ridley, Who doubts evolution?
4. ↑ One recent example is here
5. ↑ This example from the movie Expelled is particularly malicious.
6. ↑ A seemingly quite recent (2008) addition to the quote miner’s armoury has been a quote pulled from Darwin’s The Descent of Man, alleging to show he was a racist as demonstrated by Ken DeMeyer at Conservapedia. Whenever this half paragraph is quoted by creationists, it always demonstrates the same omission thus revealing (ahem) the common descent of the quote mine. The ellipsis conceals the omission of the text “as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. ‘Anthropological Review,’ April 1867, p.236.)” revealing Darwin was repeating the opinion of his academic colleagues at the time, and regardless of whether he was or was not a racist his views were held in common with the greater part of the western world. Incidentally, thanks to the Internet one can now read Darwin’s quoted source without even a trip to a university library. Also of note is the very next article in the review, entitled “The theory of development and its bearing on science and religion” which reminds us that the battle of getting fundamentalists to understand that while not antagonistic to their beliefs, science does in fact rule out events of creation by fiat has been going on for over a century and half.
7. ↑ 1 “Panel and Quote Mining”
8. ↑ Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines, talk.origins Archive
9. ↑ 2 Answers in Genesis quote page
10. ↑ The basis for this example comes largely from the internet essay 56 deceits in Fahrenheit 911 by Dave Kopel, found here
11. ↑ http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution
12. ↑ “Find your delight in the LORD who will give you your heart’s desire.” (NAB)
13. ↑ Psalm 14:1, NIV: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'”
14. ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36T6KjLgFwI
15. ↑ Examples of Quote Mining in Posters leading up to Simon Fraser University Jesus week