This is an excerpt of a blog originally published on Students 4 Best Evidence
As humans we cannot escape bias. We use our previous experiences and reasoning to make sense of the world as best we can. But we’re not perfect. One of the flaws in our reasoning is confirmation bias – the influence of preconceived ideas on our reasoning. Simply put, confirmation bias is the tendency to favour answers that confirm ideas and beliefs that we already have. Confirmation bias is important in the context of research and evidence-based healthcare but it may have an impact in almost every walk of life, so it’s a very handy concept to understand...