Cherry-Picking
My friend and I were talking about rhetoric and logical fallacies. One of us brought up cherry-picking. I think it was me. Cherry-picking is when you only use data that helps your point, but you disregard the rest. You only use the best data for your point. Cherry-picking can be found in many logical fallacies.
Example: You are ignoring the best data. You are just cherry-picking the studies that agree with your point of view!
Cherry-picking is an allusion to harvesting cherries. Cherries do not ripen after they are picked, so they must be picked when they are ripe. Harvesting cherries can take over a week because you can only harvest the best cherries each day (or every other day). If you sell these cherries, the customer will only see the best cherries. They might conclude that all the cherries are that quality. It is not true. Most of the cherries will ripen at a different time. Some cherries will be unsuitable for sale. Even rain can cause the cherries to split in half. But the customer only sees the best cherries because you cherry-picked them.
The cherry harvest origin seems to be almost universally accepted. It dates to 1959. However, Idiom Origins suggests that cherry-picking goes back even farther to the late 19th century or early 20th century. It was a British nautical expression used to describe seamen who chose easier tasks aboard a ship. They also suggest that the phrase comes from picking the best cherries from a bowl of fruit and leaving the rest. The fruit bowl idea has been echoed in a few other places.
If I was cherry-picking my sources, I would have ignored the seamen and fruit bowl origins. 😊
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Reference:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/cherry-pick
https://idiomorigins.org/origin/cherry-pick
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/cherry/cherry-tree-harvesting.htm