Comment by jraph

12 hours ago

Anecdotes is already a plural, of anecdote. Data is not a plural of anecdotes, or anecdote, it is plural of datum (kinda, data is often used as a mass/uncountable noun, in which case it's not a plural).

Under which hypothesis (formulated before the observations), how you collect it and its statistical significance and then how you interpret it (guided by the hypothesis) are key.

Such data is nothing like anecdotes. Anecdotes are at best inspirations to formulate hypotheses.

Intuition is a core element in research (it guides the formulation of hypotheses) but doesn't constitute evidence.