Isocrates' Dynamic Conduct yourself toward your parents as you would have your children conduct themselves toward you. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.

Cherry-picking has optionality: the one telling the story (and publishing it) has the advantage of being able to show the confirmatory examples and completely ignore the rest — and the more volatility and dispersion, the rosier the best story will be (and the darker the worst story).

Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have been read for more than half a century by millions of people, in spite of, or most likely thanks to, brutally nasty reviews and attempts to discredit her. The first-order information is the intensity: what matters is the effort the critic puts into trying to prevent others from reading the book, or, more generally in life, it is the effort in badmouthing someone that matters, not so much what is said. So if you really want people to read a book, tell them it is “overrated,” with a sense of outrage (and use the attribute “underrated” for the opposite effect).