Data Dredging

Data dredging, also known as data mining or p-hacking, involves analyzing large datasets to find patterns or relationships after the fact, often without a specific hypothesis in mind. While this can reveal interesting insights, it risks identifying spurious or coincidental patterns as meaningful, leading to false conclusions. Essentially, it’s akin to searching through data until something appears significant purely by chance, which can be misleading unless proper statistical controls and validation methods are applied to ensure the findings are genuine.