Not of one mind

Some email reaction I've had to the results of the novelists poll suggests that the collectivity of voters was guilty of bad judgement - in ranking Ian McEwan (48 points) above Charlotte Bronte (32), say, or someone else above someone else else. Fallacy of composition. Some writers obtained more votes and more points than other writers and that's all. There was no unified decision by a single mind; there wasn't even the kind of committee decision that is made by a panel of judges for a literary prize. It may be, for all we know, that Ian McEwan is not preferred to Charlotte Bronte by those who have read the work of both, and that many who voted for him weren't in a position to make the relevant comparison. For sure, some of the novelists scoring low would not be known to some voters, others not to others, and so forth.