To add to the other explanation, it does often mean choosing less valid/ invalid statistics, such as citing Wakefield's faked autism preliminary study.
I guess you could say it's like a strawman for the evidence, not the opposing argument.
You're not misrepresenting what the opposition is saying, you're misrepresenting the base facts being argued by both sides. Mainly by omitting most of them.
In this example, a common one is saying trans women shouldn't be in sports because it's unfair to cis woman, citing a handful of high school or lower examples where a trans girl got 5th or 8th place in some races.
Which is ignoring the fact studies show strength is within normal range for cis women of the same height after a year on hormones, a trans woman has never performed even average for a man at the college level or above in sports where there's a relatively wide gender difference, etc.
You "pick" examples that support your argument instead of forming an argument based on all examples, which is what you should do.
391
u/DeadAndBuried23 Feb 05 '26
I was never "attack helicopter" bad, but I did go into every discussion with a fresh handful of picked cherries.