A person who tells or relies heavily on anecdotes, or who practices anecdotalism as a method of argument or understanding.
From anecdote plus the agentive suffix -ist (one who practices or specializes in something). Emerged alongside anecdotalism in critical discourse about reasoning methods.
An anecdotalist is technically someone who could be brilliant—like a historian or novelist—but the term often carries a slightly negative connotation in scientific or academic contexts, suggesting someone hasn't moved beyond stories to rigorous analysis.
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