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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

An alternative is that information that forces estimates to be earlier (like finding a new fossil) comes more rarely but changes our estimates drastically, whereas information that force estimates to be later (look, another year without a new fossil) comes more frequently but has smaller effects. If you assume that the media only reports changes in our estimate larger than a given absolute value, then we get the effect you're talking about.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

It works in climatology too, with the tendency to feign surprise at findings that it's now "the hottest decade" since various earlier times. Whatever date you come up with, play it up in the press release as if you find it surprising and you'll get headlines.

An amusing recent example was when the National Academy of Sciences examined the "hockey stick" controversy and decided to /reject/ earlier controversial claims in the published literature that it's recently "been the hottest in 1000 years" in favor of finding that one could only claim with confidence that it's now the hottest it's been in 400 years, which is to say that we've been on a warming trend since the Little Ice Age. Following the press release, headlines read "HOTTEST IN 400 YEARS"; you had to read the articles carefully to realize this was a backpedalling from earlier, much larger, estimates.

(for instance: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id... )

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