Suppose I have discovered a positive relationship between properties of some celestial objects, like the one formed by the black dots in the following figure.
But in making such a discovery, I repeatedly and subconsciously throw away any data point that does not seem to be a good fit to my hypothesis and keep those only data points that seem to confirm my hypothesis. Of course, these exclusions are not done in bad faith, I have reasons for myself that appear legitimate at least on the surface to exclude those outlier (red) data points to my discovery.
What kind of cognitive bias is affecting my discovery?
