When I was a boy somebody once told me, “Don’t believe
anything you hear and half of what you see.”
This advice stuck with me. Later
in childhood I became a great Houdini fan. I was amazed not only of tales of
his escapes, but of his passion for exposing spirits mediums for what they were…fakes.
I feel that same passion for exposing medical
quackery and fraud. I have confronted many snake oil salesmen in
open forums pushing magnets, power bracelets, or foot toxin absorbers. (All of
these are a complete waste of money.) When
questioned all of these upstanding citizen will swear that their product is
100% proven effective. When pressed
really, really hard for scientific evidence, some will fall back to the stance
that the scientific community will not publish real results because it would
threaten them. I have had a couple of “sales
professionals” admit that they were selling placebos, but that was a good thing. The ethics of that practice is a whole
different subject.
Lately I have been more interested not in why unscrupulous
people sell worthless products, but why people buy them. There are two ways to think about this. Why do some people believe these unbelievable
marketing claims by the marketer? But
the other approach to this is why people dismiss scientifically accepted
information. Now the easy explanation is
that people are just gullible. I have to
admit that I have tricked a few people to look up gullible in the dictionary.
I would like to know what you think about this subject. Tweet me @DrHigginbotham
