ABSTRACT
One of the most common forms of human communication is the telling of stories. The structure of a story is that it consists of a single sequence of events, often linked with a set of hypothesized causal influences. Even if the communicator of the story attempts to provide evidence for these influences, they often remain intrinsically hypothetical. People are all affected by storytelling, and it is nearly impossible to ignore a good story. Storytelling provides a strong availability bias. The solution according to Paul Meehl is simple. Don't attend. That way there is no possibility of inappropriate and irrational influence. Another problem with stories is that they are often selected to prove a point, rather than forming a basis of a statistical generalization or causal inference. It is the generalization or inference that leads to the selection of the story in the first place—with the results that the story provides absolutely no new information.
