Editing Cherry picking (section)

==History==

A story about the 5th century [[Common Era|BCE]] atheist philosopher [[Diagoras of Melos]] says how, when shown the votive gifts of people who had supposedly escaped death by shipwreck by praying to gods, he pointed out that many people ''had'' died at sea in spite of their prayers, yet these cases were not likewise commemorated<ref>{{cite book|first=Jennifer Michael|last=Hecht|author-link=Jennifer Michael Hecht|title=Doubt: A History|publisher=Harper San Francisco|year=2003|chapter=Whatever Happened to Zeus and Hera?, 600 BCE–1 CE|pages=9–10|isbn=0-06-009795-7|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QJb16_AAePkC&pg=PA10}}</ref> (this is an example of [[survivorship bias]]). [[Michel de Montaigne]] (1533–1592) in his [[Essays (Montaigne)|essay on prophecies]] comments on people willing to believe in the validity of supposed seers: 
{{quote|I see some who are mightily given to study and comment upon their almanacs, and produce them to us as an authority when anything has fallen out pat; and, for that matter, it is hardly possible but that these alleged authorities sometimes stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite number of lies. ... I think never the better of them for some such accidental hit. ... [N]obody records their flimflams and false prognostics, forasmuch as they are infinite and common; but if they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report, as being rare, incredible, and prodigious.<ref>{{cite book|author=Michel de Montaigne|title=Essays|chapter=Chapter XI--Of Prognostications|others=Translated by Charles Cotton|year=1877|orig-year=First French edition 1580|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3600}}</ref>}}