Jim Miller, discussing customer-satisfaction surveys, highlights a common error of inference:
Consumer Reports does not seem to understand that all its surveys, not just those on cars, have a systematic problem; the respondents are self selected, which often biases the results, as any good survey researcher can tell you.
So (following Jim’s example) if the Consumer Reports survey shows the Camry as more reliable than the Corvette, is this because the Camry is really more reliable or is it because people who buy Corvettes tend to drive them hard? The reliability data provided by Consumer Reports do not provide enough information to answer this question.