To Pull A Van Odell

During the course of writing this blog, I've often encountered, and railed against, the one-anecdote-proves-a-trend school of social science, whether it's Maggie Gallagher insisting that one girl who had difficulty being raised by a lesbian couple "proves" that gay marriage will be bad for children, or James Lileks' contention that using his tax rebate to hire builders to work on his house "proves" that supply-side economics works.

At Pandagon, Jesse Taylor proposes a name for this sort of nonsense:

Van Odell (n.) - The insistence that an event or phenomenon cannot have happened, be happening or happen in the future because it did not, is not and/or will not happen to an unrepresentative sample of said group. Has strong millitary connotations.

Example - When Katie said that nobody liked the brand of athletic shoes because she disliked them, she committed an egregious Van Odell.

I'll be considering adopting this into my official blogging lexicon.