Talk:Quote mining

Darwin eye quote
(moved from Conservapedia Talk:What is going on at CP?)

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. In looking for the gradations by which an organ in any species has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal ancestors; but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced in each case to look to species of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants from the same original parent-form, in order to see what gradations are possible, and for the chance of some gradations having been transmitted from the earlier stages of descent, in an unaltered or little altered condition. Amongst existing Vertebrata, we find but a small amount of gradation in the structure of the eye, and from fossil species we can learn nothing on this head. In this great class we should probably have to descend far beneath the lowest known fossiliferous stratum to discover the earlier stages, by which the eye has been perfected. In the Articulata we can commence a series with an optic nerve merely coated with pigment, and without any other mechanism; and from this low stage, numerous gradations of structure, branching off in two fundamentally different lines, can be shown to exist, until we reach a moderately high stage of perfection. In certain crustaceans, for instance, there is a double cornea, the inner one divided into facets, within each of which there is a lens-shaped swelling. In other crustaceans the transparent cones which are coated by pigment, and which properly act only by excluding lateral pencils of light, are convex at their upper ends and must act by convergence; and at their lower ends there seems to be an imperfect vitreous substance. With these facts, here far too briefly and imperfectly given, which show that there is much graduated diversity in the eyes of living crustaceans, and bearing in mind how small the number of living animals is in proportion to those which have become extinct, I can see no very great difficulty (not more than in the case of many other structures) in believing that natural selection has converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve merely coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the great Articulate class. He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths.

Quote mining question
Has anyone quote-mined the quote-miners to tie them into knots? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect quote
In the "Quote Mining Index - QMI" section, the second half of the quote appears to be incorrect. It says "this does not represent a very large gap" (emphasis mine), while all other sources I found - including TalkOrigins - say "this really does represent a very large gap" (emphasis still mine).

The other sources also explain why the large gap exists. It isn't as pithy as the version here, but it makes it clear enough that the creationists are still wrong.

Unless someone can provide a source for the "does not" version, I'm going to change it. Player 03 (talk) 04:28, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, which quote? oʇɐʇoԀʇɐϽʎzznℲ (talk/stalk) 04:30, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Here. Searching for the phrase "very large gap" should also work. Player 03 (talk) 07:37, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh wait, you're asking about the TalkOrigins page. Oops! That would be Quote #40, which I should have directly linked in the first place. Player 03 (talk) 07:42, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure, it seems we're wrong. Please change it. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 16:21, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * At first I got an odd result: 1760 results for the quote mine, but ~3000 results for the explanation. Then I realized that everyone uses the version with "[fossils]" in it, which gives ~20000 results for the quote mine. That's why I changed the first part of the quote.


 * Google doesn't actually allow you to search for a quote as long as the explanation, but I broke it up into pieces and got ~3000 for each piece. The number on the page is from searching for the full explanation quote. (Up to the point where Google cuts it off, of course.) Player 03 (talk) 07:58, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Cartoon
Could 'the proverbial artistic someone' provide an image of a quote mine? Something like with an assortment of phrases etc. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 13:53, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Michael Moore argues to vote for Donald Trump
Before the 2016 American election, Alex Jones released a video featuring Michael Moore supporting Donald Trump with arguments. Naturally this video was mirrored as a minor meme. The real video was actually a devil's advocate argument excerpted from a feature length standup/documentary(?) film by Michael Moore in support of the "lesser evil", Hillary Clinton. - This may be a good example but needs citations. Include it if you like. ~  JasonCarswell  (talk)   11:20, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

A none political/Religious/etc type of quote mining that's widely known & reported on as happening for years (prob decades) in British media - adverts and posters for movies taking review quotes out of context, at once publicly getting called out for an advert along the lines of *fake example*: original review 'this is not a good movie' a critic, the newspaper', poster quote a critic, The Newspaper says 'this is...a good movie'.86.187.172.106 (talk) 22:18, 3 August 2017 (UTC)