Except, in history, it is. Isn’t it?
How many academic histories are just a bunch of stories put together into recognizable patterns? Isn’t that considered legitimate historical proof? What else do you do before statistics become reliable? What other sort of data is there?
Prone to Laughter 
17 June 2008 at 3:40 pm
Well, actually, if you look at any other field, it’s pretty much the same thing — a collection of stories that have no meaning on their own (“gee, that’s a neat bone I just dug up!”) until you start putting them together (“Whoa! Dinosaur!”). Most of the time, there are pieces missing.
The thing is that in history, like in paleoentology, you can’t take three bones and claim you have a dinosaur. *That’s* anecdotal. How many bones does it take, though?
17 June 2008 at 6:49 pm
I think the plural of anecdote IS data. Even the most quantitative figures are simply anecdotes (“he said this” “I observed that”). The myth lies in the idea that data is anything more than this.
19 June 2008 at 4:29 pm
I get annoyed when people refer to qualitative data as anecdotes. It does make them sound so. . .insignificant (which they can be, sure, but aren’t inherently).
19 June 2008 at 9:20 pm
Well, what is the difference though? Today I post on the internet “hey, this one thing happpened to me.” In fifty years, my blog is the only one that survived, and suddenly it’s primary source qualitative data? What legitimizes that? Or are you arguing that all anecdotes are qualitative data?
Rustbelt Intellectual dings the anecdote because it’s being used to talk about populations that are covered by census data, and I wouldn’t call the census an anecdote, but I’m not sure what other category of true data exists.
(NPD, love your analogy.)
21 June 2008 at 2:19 am
Sure, all anecdotes are qualitative data, but not all qualitative data are equally good or representative. Your one blog says something, but it certainly doesn’t say everything about blogs. Using it, you can say something, but can’t generalize. (so the example that RI cites – the one guy’s comments – does tell us something about Hyde Park, but it isn’t the definitive statement about HP.
In other words, what Notorious PhD said. . .
3 August 2008 at 3:21 am
Thanks for the post