Cherry-Picked Citations
Quoting only the studies that support the position.
"A bibliography is also an opinion."
What is Cherry-Picked Citations? Quoting only the studies that support the position. Internal research conclusions engineered upstream of analysis.
Whitepapers that cite only the wins.
Internal research conclusions engineered upstream of analysis.
Drag yourself across Cherry-Picked Citations.
Real scene: Whitepapers that cite only the wins. The pull below is the same one cherry-picked citations exerts on the call. Find the position where you stop being able to defend yourself with logic.
In the room: Internal research conclusions engineered upstream of analysis.
Pick a reaction to Cherry-Picked Citations
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The full taxonomy entry
Every concept in the Atlas uses the same structure — so Cherry-Picked Citations can be compared, recombined, and cited like an element on a periodic table.
- Business
- Leadership
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sales
- Marketing
- AI
- Negotiation
- Media
- Public Policy
- Relationships
- Where in our org would Cherry-Picked Citations most often show up unnoticed?
- Which metric, ritual, or contract clause quietly rewards Cherry-Picked Citations?
- If we removed every payoff for Cherry-Picked Citations, what behavior would replace it?
- Who benefits when Cherry-Picked Citations persists — and who pays the cost?
- People defend the status quo using the language of cherry-picked citations.
- Decisions cluster around the easiest narrative rather than the strongest evidence.
- New data changes the slide deck but not the decision.
- Anyone naming the pattern is treated as the problem.
Every Atlas entry is a node in a knowledge graph. See the related rail below to follow the connections.
See Cherry-Picked Citations through this lens
Each layer of the Incentives OS reframes this concept with its own thinkers, vocabulary, and diagnostic question.
Do you actually know Cherry-Picked Citations?
Three quick questions. Result is saved into your review streak — come back when the term is due to lock it in.
Which best describes Cherry-Picked Citations?
Worked example, counter-example & concept map
On-demand AI analysis grounded in the Lab's research. Cached on your device after first run.
When you encounter Cherry-Picked Citations, your prefrontal cortex has to do extra work to override the automatic response — and that override budget is finite.
Executive control, planning, impulse override, working memory, System 2. First thing to go offline under stress, fatigue, or low blood sugar. Why your 4pm decisions are worse than your 9am ones.
See Prefrontal in the Brain Atlas →Picked for you, from the Atlas
Ranked by shared learning paths, overlapping chips, and what you've saved.
A single story used as proof of a general claim.
n=1 generalized to n=everyone.
Selecting only the data that supports the conclusion.
Sweeping conclusions from a small sample.
Generalizing from winners while ignoring identical losers.
Drawing a target around wherever the bullets landed.
Send the card, not just the link
A pre-rendered social card with the title, eyebrow, and URL. Copy the link, post it anywhere, or download the SVG for slides.
More definitions to follow
Every term in the Atlas connects to a dozen others. Pick any of these and see where it takes you.
Recurring aid flows can entrench recipient governments and crowd out domestic capacity-building.
We overestimate the intensity and duration of emotional reactions.
Treating real-world uncertainty like a game with clear, known rules.
Judging only results ignores ethics of process and rewards shortcuts that look like wins.
Money flows after ecosystems collapse, not to protect them in advance.
A negotiation between conscious goals and the unconscious 'positive intention' behind a problem behavior.
Granular tracking can optimize busy work while real priorities go untouched.
If A then B; B happened; therefore A.
It's true because many believe it.
Know the perimeter of what you actually know.
The gap between early adopters and the early majority kills most products.
Emotions spread through groups via micro-cues.