Hasty Generalizations - Essay Example

A hasty observation, just as the words suggest, is such an observation that is too wide with lots of broad generalizations and based on too little tangible evidence. It is always not ethical when one decides to put forward or assert a broad claim when in a real sense, one only has anecdotal to support the claim. The claim might be too broad, yet, you only have isolated instances or evidence to show as evidence to support your claim. Such claims are found to be baseless, unfounded, and of no strong evidence (Richard).

Giving a real-life example, there was a time that there was a claim that a school head in one of the states in the U.S. was engaging in gay activities with small boys, hence sodomizing the boys. Such a claim went on and on until many people began to generalize that school heads in that State sodomize school boys. Such a claim is categorized under hasty generalizations as it is unethical to use one isolated case to make a generalization over all school heads in the whole State. This claim is therefore based on inadequate evidence (Julia). It will be unfair to make such an unfortunate claim that will go to the extent of tarnishing the names of all school heads in the whole State without any adequate evidence (Purdue). It, therefore, doesn’t meet the required threshold of a claim that should be considered to be generalized to all the school heads in the State. The conclusion of the claim is therefore hasty and fallacious (Nizkor).

It is also a hasty and fallacious conclusion that can be reached after interviewing just one person at a University on whether they can speak French, and if they say they don’t speak French, then your conclusion is that everyone in the University doesn’t speak French (Bennette).