<<The MS thesaurus says equivelent words would be sketchy, unreliable, untrustworty and undependable. I used it with the intent of saying your comparison was meaningless. Seems pretty close to me, but I will go with any of the words above.>>
Why not look it up in a dictionary instead of a thesaurus?
Here's what dictionary.com says:
# also an·ec·dot·ic (-dtk) or an·ec·dot·i·cal (--kl) Of, characterized by, or full of anecdotes.
# Based on casual observations or indications rather than rigorous or scientific analysis: “There are anecdotal reports of children poisoned by hot dogs roasted over a fire of the [oleander] stems” (C. Claiborne Ray).
So let's say i had a neighbor who had a cold, did a bunch of push-ups and got better.
I might say, "Push-ups cure colds." But that would be based on anecdotal evidence, that is stories.
The murder rates in the rest of the industrialized world aren't anecdotes, they're not stories: "Well i've heard some countries have lower murder rates than us." These are scientifically compiled, valid, statistics.
You may think they're irrelevant to our situation, but they're hardly anecdotal.
Steve Dietrich |
