Ambiguous borderline cases get sorted in ways correlated with outcomes.

Evidence

In this chapter we have focused on the gray zone between the positive and negative concepts (see figure 6.1). As Sartori (1970) emphasized with his ladder of generality, there is a clear relationship between intension and extension for necessary and sufficient condition concepts. Scholars have the option of putting observations in the gray zone either into the positive or negative sets. As our analyses of international crises have illustrated, this can lead to significant selection effects. Often, decisions about gray zone cases are correlated with dependent variables, hence producing selection biases. These decisions then have downstream implications for causal inferences. The intension-extension relationship thus plays a large role in case selection and causal inference. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 1096

Categorization

• XREF: Same logic as colonial administrators’ ‘racialized common sense’ shaping archival claims when evidence was thin.