Real Evidence

Perhaps, some people are born skeptics—they possess an innate ability to see right through anything and everyone. Others, however, might be more inclined to look for the goodness or truth in people, products, and evidence. It is not until many people have been jaded by a certain idea that they then become cynical. For example, when I was a little girl, I always wanted to try the products on the “As Seen on TV” infomercials. One day, I saw an infomercial for the “Hairagami”—a product that would let you fold your hair, so to speak. I remember thinking that I could use the hairagami to make really cool ponytails and buns for my hair. My mom, already having been jaded by these infomercials, told me the products usually didn’t work the way they did on television. But, being the strong-willed child I was, I bugged and bugged for a hairagami. When my mom finally caved and ordered it, I was really disappointed that the product didn’t work as well as expected. It was really hard to fold the hairagami so that it fit right with my hair. Needless to say, there began my skepticism of TV infomercials. As a consumer, I didn’t research the product deep enough to find out its many flaws.

Chapter six in unSpun does a good job of addressing this need for finding the hard evidence before making any rash decisions. We need to look for real truths—the ones behind the propaganda. For example, it would be important to examine any medicine, like Cold-Eeze, before taking it in order to see if it’s as good as its label says. Unfortunately, in our society, it is probably not as good as the label makes it out to be. Similarly, we need to watch out for the appeals to authority in advertising. For example, as the text points out, Martin Sheen’s TV portrayal of a president shouldn’t be enough for us to trust his political judgments (125). A while back, I read an interview with Grey’s Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey (Derek Shepherd aka McDreamy). Dempsey said that he had once been on a plane where another passenger became very ill. To his surprise everyone looked at him like he should help the sick passenger. Of course when people become panicked they often get desperate, but just because someone plays a doctor on TV does not mean he or she is competent in the field of medicine. We just need to dig deep and get past the fallacies.