Hal, to be precise, the bias is generalizing from knowledge of others’ failures to skepticism about disliked conclusions, but failing to generalize to skepticism about preferred conclusions or one’s own conclusions. That is, the error is not absence of generalization, but imbalance of generalization, which is far deadlier. I do agree with you that the reviewer’s conclusion is not supported (to put it mildly) by the evidence under review.
Hal, to be precise, the bias is generalizing from knowledge of others’ failures to skepticism about disliked conclusions, but failing to generalize to skepticism about preferred conclusions or one’s own conclusions. That is, the error is not absence of generalization, but imbalance of generalization, which is far deadlier. I do agree with you that the reviewer’s conclusion is not supported (to put it mildly) by the evidence under review.