Difference between revisions of "Quote mining"

Revision as of 07:39, March 8, 2007

Quote mining is an intellectually dishonest practice where a quote is either taken out of context or abridged in such a way as to give an impression the 'miner' desires, but is not that of the original person quoted. [1]

An example of a mined 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." -- On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, 1859.

The full quote, showing the author's intended impression:

"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." -- On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, 1859. [2]