Not what we actually asked

From a post, AGoogleADay-inspired research, at the fascinating blog, SearchReSearch. Evidence of confirmation bias even among high-functioning individuals. Possibly it should be especially among high functioning individuals.

Most often people write to let us know that their answer was correct, when in fact they hadn’t read the question fully. This is probably the most common email we get, which worries me slightly. The people playing AGAD are for the most part pretty careful readers and searchers—such comments always make me review the question to see if we couldn’t have phrased it better. But often, no, we couldn’t have… they just misread the question and found an answer to a question THEY had in their head, not what we actually asked.