Choosing which facts to highlight and which to bury, creating a distorted picture without technically lying. The omitted facts are real; they're just not here.
A company press release: "Our product reduced symptoms in 63% of participants in our 12-week clinical trial." What it omits: the placebo group also saw a 58% reduction. The treatment effect is real but tiny — and the framing implies dramatic efficacy. Every number quoted is accurate; the impression created is false.
People generally assume that relevant information is being shared with them — what psychologists call the "cooperative principle" of communication. We don't naturally compensate for the possibility that our interlocutor is strategically omitting key context. The brain tends to build its model from what's presented, not flag what might be missing.
Strong single-number claims without comparison baselines, before/after data without control groups, and statistics presented in isolation without denominator or context.