Quote mining

Quote mining (also contextomy) is the fallacious tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint, to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme, or to make it seem that the opponent holds positions they don't in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize. It's a way of lying. This tactic is widely used among Young Earth Creationists (YEC) in an attempt to discredit evolution and by TERFs to discredit scientific research on being transgender.
Quote mining is an informal fallacy and a fallacy of ambiguity, in that it removes context that is necessary to understand the mined quote.
==Format==
1: Read a large chunk of text, and notice something that agrees with your argument:
2: Remove all unnecessary or disagreeing text:
And you're done!
Another way is to make creative use of ellipses:
Cut out the part you don't like, add an ellipsis, for the sake of form:
And you've "corrected" the quote!
The best part is that no one will be the wiser since few would bother to look up the original and check the full context of your quote.
For extra points, you can reformat it as such:
This makes it seem like you're presenting "both sides" of Person X's views when all you care about is the statement that agrees with your position.
With the above lessons firmly in mind, you are now ready to submit your overly long, self-published paper and earn yourself a fellowship at Creation Ministries International.
==Examples==
There are many examples of quote mining, probably because (sadly) it works.
===Darwin===
A famous example, possibly one of the most famous examples of quote mining, is the following misquotation of Charles Darwin, where the bold section is often presented without including the rest of the quote.
As may be seen, the quote has been taken out of context to give it the opposite meaning, thus appearing to support a different conclusion from that in the original article. Bolder quote miners may actually use ellipses to omit material that contradicts their point of view even in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, safe in the knowledge that their audience will not look up the full quote. The most brazen of all will go so far as abusing ellipses to string together phrases that are paragraphs apart, or even from entirely different chapters of a book.
Supporters of this dishonest tactic often try to defend themselves against accusations of quote mining by stating that only supporters of evolution use the term: therefore it is invalid.User talk:Aschlafly/Archive12: Panel and Quote Mining Conservapedia (archived from March 7, 2009). However, this is largely because the primary group using these tactics, strenuously avoided in academic circles, are Young Earth Creationists; therefore their opponents will most often be the ones leveling the charge. This is less about the validity of the term and more about the desire to cling to a spurious tactic when few other arguments are available.
As a result of widespread use of quote mining in YEC circles, several sitesQuote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines by John Pieret (October 31, 2006) talk.origins Archive. have been set up as "quote mines", providing lists of mined quotes without the need to actually go to the source material where one could get led astray into understanding evilutionism. Most users of these quotes have never read the original source material, and would likely be hard-pressed to actually find copies. Answers in Genesis quote page
===Mark Ridley===
The following quote, mentioned in New Scientist, has been used in an attempt to discredit evolution:Talk:Theory of Evolution/Archive 1: conservatives, where is the extensive criticism of the evolutionary position? Conservapedia (archived from July 18, 2017).
However, the quote leaves out the very next sentence, which not only provides context, but shows the author's point of view much more accurately:
The article goes on in the next paragraph to state that: 
===Attempted use by Private Eye for libel defence===
A case brought by Lord Russell of Liverpool, a legal adviser at the Nuremberg trials, centering on whether his book The Scourge of the SwastikaThe Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes by Edward Frederick Langley Russell (1954) Cassell. was pornographic, was the first accusation of libel against Private Eye actually to make it to court, in 1965. 
The success of the Eye's defence can perhaps be best summed up by this exchange in the courtroom:
The Eye lost.
===Fahrenheit 9/11===
A classic and definitive example of quote mining comes in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore excerpts a speech by Condoleezza Rice, where she says:
At which point the camera cuts away, the audience laughs and thinks that Rice is being deceptive in trying to argue that al-Qaeda and Iraq were jointly involved in planning 9/11. The rest of the speech continues:
Although Rice did try to place the blame for 9/11 on Iraq by declaring it "a central front" of a "great terrorist, international terrorist network", she also stated that Saddam was not directly involved in 9/11. When Moore cited only one part out of context, he failed to include the entire statement where Rice says Saddam didn't plan 9/11, but actually is part of the terrorist conspiracy that caused 9/11 while not actually being involved (see: doublethink). It is also worth noting that the speech was made in November 2003, so it is disingenuous for Moore to argue that it was a part of "drumming up public support for the war" which started in March 2003, eight months before her speech.Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11 by Dave Kopel (2018).
===Climategate===
In which leaked e-mails were copiously quote mined in order to insinuate scientists were using "tricks" to "hide the decline". In fact, this wasn't just quote mining choice phrases out of context, it involved actively removing the explanation of what "hide the decline" even meant. SPOILER ALERT: It didn't mean "covering up" or "faking data", but something far more boring — simply counteracting data that was known to be wrong.
===Adam Smith on responsible capitalism===
Speaking at the Liberal Democrat autumn conference, Liberal Democrat business secretary, Vincent Cable prompted rebuke from the Adam Smith Institute by quoting Adam Smith on regulation:
However, Smith goes on to say:
===NASA as a defense agency===
The very first words of the book Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA by Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara, are:Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA by Richard C. Hoagland & Mike Bara (2007) Feral House. 1st ed. ISBN 1932595260.
Pseudo-justifying this announcement, Hoagland and Bara cite Sec. 305(i) of the Space Act:
…of which the full version is:
Title 35 is exclusively concerned with patent law.U.S. Code: Title 35. Patents Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Chapter 17 says that if an employee of a "defense agency" (as defined) files an application for a patent, the commissioner of patents may keep it under wraps while checking with the bosses of the relevant agency to make sure publishing it won't blow some cosmic secret.35 U.S. Code Chapter 17 — Secrecy Of Certain Inventions And Filing Applications In Foreign Country Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. In other words, it simply brings NASA into line with other national enterprises in the context of boring old patent law. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have the exact same wording in their charters.
For the record, NASA is by definition a civilian agency. Dilettantes like Hoagland and Bara get confused because the agency does undertake certain classified projects on a contract basis.
===Breitbart.com===
Pretty much everything they get attention for is due to selectively editing quotes and videos so that the quotes appear to represent the opposite of their actual, in-context meaning. Breitbart's attack on Shirley Sherrod was particularly egregious.
===Pseudoastronomy===
The Flat Earth and geocentrist movements have frequently resorted to quote mining to support their crankery.Category: Quote Mining FlatEarth.ws. Examples include:
*Quoting part of physicist Albert A. Michelson's argument ("There was only one other possible conclusion to draw — that the earth was at rest.") without quoting his conclusion that contradicted that statement ("The hypothesis of a stationary ether is erroneous.").Albert Michelson in "Michelson and the Speed of Light" FlatEarth.ws.
*Video editing part of an interview with Buzz Aldrin to falsely make it look like he thought the Moon landings hadn't happened.Buzz Aldrin's Interview & the Quote-Mining by Flat Earthers] FlatEarth.ws.Did Buzz Aldrin Admit That He Never Went to the Moon? Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's answer to a question posed by a child was misrepresented as an admission that he didn't set foot on the moon. by Dan Evon (27 July 2018) Snopes.
*Taking Neil deGrasse Tyson's "'pear-shaped' analogy" to explain the spheroid shape of Earth out of context.Neil deGrasse Tyson and His 'Pear-Shaped' Analogy FlatEarth.ws.
*Editing a NASA video to make it seem like Apollo had not traversed a van Allen radiation belt.Orion EFT-1, Apollo and the Van Allen Radiation Belts FlatEarth.ws.
*Leaving out the end of a sentence by Albert Einstein "Since then I have come to believe that the motion of the Earth cannot be detected by any optical experiment," (flat Earth version) which ends with "though the Earth is revolving around the Sun."Quote-Mined Einstein Statement FlatEarth.ws.
*The geocentrist 'documentary' film The Principle.'The Principle': A Documentary Without Principle FlatEarth.ws.
===Creationism===
Creationists do this. A lot.
===Others===
*Expelled: Leader's Guide
*Nils Heribert Nilsson
*Antonio Lima-de-Faria
*Albert Einstein and Richard Dawkins (for evangelistic purposes)Examples of Quote Mining in Posters leading up to Simon Fraser University Jesus week
*"Scientific facts which annihilate evolutionary theory", at The Evolution Cruncher
*Creation/Evolution Quotes by Stephen E. Jones (archived from March 21, 2017)
*"The Atheist Test", which uses the above-mentioned Darwin quote-mine. The site has so far not responded to notification of the "mistake". 
*A bunch of out-of-context (and probably out of date also) quotes by scientists allegedly casting doubts on evolution is at Anointed-One.
*A quote miner fails
*Don Patton's collection of quotations on evolution — many with some staggeringly dishonest quote mining, including an ellipsis that spans 4 whole chapters of Origin of Species!
*TV tricks of the trade — quotes and cutaways
*Perfect example of quote-mining freemasons
*Richard A. Gardner's supposed pro-pedophilia.
*Smoloko News: Especially when it comes to contextomy on random quotes said by Jews.
*Joe Biden: A Trump attack ad played a clip that made it appear that Biden bribed a Ukrainian prosecutor.
*Bernie Sanders: Infowars and other conservative sites tried to make a question that Bernie answered on racial blindspots in 2016 debate to say that white people did know what it was like to be poor. Sanders was actually referring to how blacks were treated by the police as compared to whites.
*George Soros: Glenn Beck and others edited a 60 Minutes interview of Soros, who was at the time posing as a non-Jew as suggested by his family to survive the Holocaust, so they could use the clip to make it look like Soros supported rounding up Jews. Both Glenn Beck and Alex Jones still use this clip to smear Soros.
*Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi: A passage from his 1925 book Praktischer Idealismus about the future of humanity being mixed-race is regularly quote-mined as "evidence" for him advocating the destruction of Europe and its native people (see Alt-right glossary#Kalergi Plan) – however, in his other works (e.g. Paneuropa from 1923), he vehemently opposes non-white people being admitted to Europe and instead advocates for a united Europe to rape Africa for its resources.
* His 1924 book You Gentiles is quote-mined extremely often to make the various claims by anti-Semites, compiled by him, sound like he himself is asserting them.
==The Bible==
Theologians, especially Christian fundamentalist theologians, can acquire extensive skills in mining the Bible for nugget-quotes (conveniently-sized Biblical verses). Since many authors and editors have cobbled the texts of the Biblical canon together, such scripture contains many contradictions and other situations where the Bible can be quoted against itself (sometimes even within the same book!). Quote miners can take advantage of this largesse — and Christian writers have often decontextualized Biblical verses to get whatever twisted interpretation they can out of them. For example, has been used to justify name it and claim it theology.
Of course, two can play that game. As the Bible says (, ):
Although maybe King David (the Bible attributes both of these psalms to him) himself quote mined this from a more nuanced statement.
==Conspiracy theorists==
Conspiracy theorists, lacking evidence, need to resort to quote mining to give the illusion of an overwhelming amount of evidence. By doing this, one can do things like: Make the UN announce an International Court, announce a Global Currency, and make Obama announce a New World Order by quoting him saying the "Old order" is not working and that they need a "new order".Barack Obama and the New World Order 666 by 
Bible Flock Box (Jul 31, 2014) YouTube
==Quote Mining Index==
In his book The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins jokingly suggested that you could create a Quote Mining Index (QMI) by calculating the ratio of the number of times a quote is mined versus the number of times it is quoted in full (or when context is also quoted) — using Google search results as a proxy for how many times the quotes appear. For example, his quote,
returned 24,600 hits on Google. Whilst the following explanation:
returned only 3,160 hits. That is 7.8 quote mines to every "legitimate" use of the quote, or a QMI of 7.8.
==See also==
*Cherry picking
*Fallacy of ambiguity
*Intellectual dishonesty
*James O'Keefe
*List of fallacious quotes by homeopaths
*Lying for Jesus
*Lying by omission
*Rove's Law
*Straw man
==External links==
*Excellent video on how text, audio, and video cuts are made to look seamless
*This video contains examples of quote mining from officially unpublished vocal music scores.
*Quoting Out of Context, Fallacy Files
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Assessing pseudoscience
Category:Fallacies of ambiguity
Category:Fallacious arguments
Category:Informal fallacies