Ad hominem bias

Last updated on Jul 13, 2021

Definition: From Latin meaning “to the person”; Judgement of an argument or piece of work influenced by the characteristics of the person who forwarded it, not the characteristics of the argument itself. Ad hominem bias can be negative, as when work from a competitor or target of personal animosity is viewed more critically than the quality of the work merits, or positive, as when work from a friend benefits from overly favourable evaluation.

Related term: Peer review

Drafted and Reviewed by: Mahmoud Elsherif, Bradley Baker, Filip Dechterenko, Bethan Iley, Madeleine Ingham, Graham Reid

https://forrt.org/glossary/ad-hominem-bias/

2022 - FORRT > Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training content licensed under a CC BY NC SA 4.0 license

Creative Commons License
Parsons, S., Azevedo, F., Elsherif, M. M., Guay, S., Shahim, O. N., Govaart, G. H., … & Aczel, B. (2022). A Community-Sourced Glossary of Open Scholarship Terms. Nature human behaviour, 6(3), 312-318. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01269-4

» GLOSSARY