# Contested concept: dunning-kruger effect

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: Disagreement over whether the effect is real or an artefact is partly masked by participants meaning different things by the term: the original graph pattern, a popular stereotype, or Dunning's account of misinformed confidence.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/dunning-kruger effect` (data: `/concept/dunning-kruger effect.json`)

## Senses in use
- **A phenomenon about everyone's misplaced confidence where they are misinformed, not about dumb people** — used in 4 claim(s)
- **A statistical artefact of unreliable self-assessment measurement, reproducible with random noise** — used in 4 claim(s)
- **A claim that most unskilled people are unaware of their lack of skill** — used in 3 claim(s)
- **An incantation for explaining away stupidity and incompetence** — used in 2 claim(s)
- **A real cognitive bias of the brain, by which the unskilled overestimate themselves** — used in 1 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [[The Dunning-Kruger effect] is about us, not them.](/claim/claim_0cec02ccbf0a.md) _(sense: A phenomenon about everyone's misplaced confidence where they are misinformed, not about dumb people)_
- [[The Dunning-Kruger effect] is mostly about all of us when it comes to things we are not very competent at.](/claim/claim_3e2a1f785522.md) _(sense: A phenomenon about everyone's misplaced confidence where they are misinformed, not about dumb people)_
- [Random data actually mimics the Dunning-Kruger effect really well.](/claim/claim_4e370be14232.md) _(sense: A statistical artefact of unreliable self-assessment measurement, reproducible with random noise)_
- [A small number of unskilled people are unaware of it: about 5-6% [of people in Dr. Nuhfer's team's data] fit that.](/claim/claim_56cfcfeeb619.md) _(sense: A claim that most unskilled people are unaware of their lack of skill)_
- [The Dunning-Kruger effect had not been shown to be a bias in our thinking but is just an artefact.](/claim/claim_67e86f73246c.md) _(sense: A statistical artefact of unreliable self-assessment measurement, reproducible with random noise)_
- [The words "Dunning-Kruger effect" have been wielded as an incantation by journalists and skeptics alike for years to explain away stupidity…](/claim/claim_6a12af67a1da.md) _(sense: An incantation for explaining away stupidity and incompetence)_
- [The Dunning-Kruger effect is not about dumb people.](/claim/claim_847659e22107.md) _(sense: A phenomenon about everyone's misplaced confidence where they are misinformed, not about dumb people)_
- [So many [of the media outlets] simply endorse the [Dunning-Kruger] effect as a real bias of the brain](/claim/claim_8976f5f55fd4.md) _(sense: A real cognitive bias of the brain, by which the unskilled overestimate themselves)_
- [There are dumb people who do not realize they are dumb, but that was never what the Dunning-Kruger effect was about.](/claim/claim_a41921bf80b3.md) _(sense: An incantation for explaining away stupidity and incompetence)_
- [The unreliability of the self-assessment measurement itself explains a good chunk of what Dunning, Kruger, and other scientists who have si…](/claim/claim_a764cb604de1.md) _(sense: A statistical artefact of unreliable self-assessment measurement, reproducible with random noise)_
- [Dr. Dunning believes the [Dunning-Kruger] effect "has more to do with being *misinformed* rather than uninformed."](/claim/claim_afbb13e204cb.md) _(sense: A phenomenon about everyone's misplaced confidence where they are misinformed, not about dumb people)_
- [The unreliability of the self-assessment measurement itself, however, is a strong contender to explain a good chunk of what Dunning, Kruger…](/claim/claim_d30462c109b3.md) _(sense: A statistical artefact of unreliable self-assessment measurement, reproducible with random noise)_
- [In Dr. Nuhfer's own papers, his team disproved the claim [of the Dunning-Kruger effect] that most people that are unskilled are unaware of …](/claim/claim_d82405a352e2.md) _(sense: A claim that most unskilled people are unaware of their lack of skill)_
- [In Dr. Ed Nuhfer's own papers, his team disproved the claim that most people that are unskilled are unaware of it and instead showed that b…](/claim/claim_e337ade12463.md) _(sense: A claim that most unskilled people are unaware of their lack of skill)_