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> anecdotal: not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research. By definition, it is anecdotal. A single piece

> anecdotal: not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research. By definition, it is anecdotal. A single piece of price data observed only by you with no evidence is not proof that EU grown vegetables are more expensive than those from Mexico. To say that someones supermarket bill going up is somehow more anecdotal than "I found asparagus from Spain that cost more than asparagus from Mexico" is absurd.

krona 10y ago
I'm providing empirical evidence of a verifiable claim that is either true or false. You can argue about the rigorousness of the claim, but regardless it can be independently verified.
- JamesMcMinn 10y ago
  Empirical evidence justifies or disproves a claim. A single point of data does not justify the claim that vegetables from Mexico are cheaper than vegetables from the EU - all you have done is state that you once found a vegetable from one source country for cheaper than the same vegetable from another country - you haven't provided any evidence what-so-ever (the name of the supermarket, the prices, the volumes, the different brands), just made a claim. Empirical evidence in this case would be a large scale survey of the prices of comparable vegetables across multiple supermarkets, over a long period (several years to cover seasonal variance in prices).
grkvlt 10y ago
Not really; there are differences between the two - a price differential is something that could possibly be checked, reasonably objective fact that inferences can be drawn from. Someone's weekly supermarket choices are not fixed like the cost-of-living index basket of goods, they are entirely subjective and will change, sometimes hugely, from week to week without anything needing to alter in the world economy, and the fact that a bill is reported as being higher does not allow me to make useful predictions.

krona 10y ago

I'm providing empirical evidence of a verifiable claim that is either true or false. You can argue about the rigorousness of the claim, but regardless it can be independently verified.

JamesMcMinn 10y ago
Empirical evidence justifies or disproves a claim. A single point of data does not justify the claim that vegetables from Mexico are cheaper than vegetables from the EU - all you have done is state that you once found a vegetable from one source country for cheaper than the same vegetable from another country - you haven't provided any evidence what-so-ever (the name of the supermarket, the prices, the volumes, the different brands), just made a claim. Empirical evidence in this case would be a large scale survey of the prices of comparable vegetables across multiple supermarkets, over a long period (several years to cover seasonal variance in prices).

grkvlt 10y ago

Not really; there are differences between the two - a price differential is something that could possibly be checked, reasonably objective fact that inferences can be drawn from. Someone's weekly supermarket choices are not fixed like the cost-of-living index basket of goods, they are entirely subjective and will change, sometimes hugely, from week to week without anything needing to alter in the world economy, and the fact that a bill is reported as being higher does not allow me to make useful predictions.