Editing Observation (section)

===Confirmation bias===
{{main|confirmation bias}}
Human observations are biased toward confirming the observer's conscious and unconscious expectations and view of the world; we "''see what we expect to see''".<ref name="Shermer">{{cite book
  | last = Shermer
  | first = Michael
  | title = Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
  | publisher = MacMillan
  | year = 2002
  | pages = 299–302
  | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=LYIkAkBE7tsC&pg=PA299
  | isbn = 1429996765}}</ref> In psychology, this is called [[confirmation bias]].<ref name="Shermer" />  Since the object of scientific research is the [[Discovery (observation)|discovery]] of new phenomena, this bias can and has caused new discoveries to be overlooked; one example is the discovery of [[x-ray]]s. It can also result in erroneous scientific support for widely held cultural myths, on the other hand, as in the [[scientific racism]] that supported ideas of racial superiority in the early 20th century.<ref name="Gardner">{{cite book
 | last1  = Gardner
 | first1 = Martin
 | title  = Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
 | publisher = Dover Publications, Inc.
 | date   = 1957
 | pages  = 152–163
 | url    = https://books.google.com/books?id=X0HCAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA152
 | isbn   = 9780486131627
 }}</ref>