Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, �Trust Us, We�re Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future�
I was crossing the street today, on the same corner that I almost got hit by the car a few weeks ago, again patiently waiting for a light when a guy on a bicycle crossed against the light and headed right toward me. He stopped next to the curb and stared at me for a second, finally saying, �Is your name Dean?�
I don�t like this question, as I have plenty of people who still want to beat me up for things that happened a long time ago. But I admitted who I was, ready to fight, or at the very least, run.
�Dude, I read your book!�
�Really?� I said.
�Yeah! I bought it at Alameda Archives, and I loved it! Do you still work at that bookstore? If I brought your book over, would you sign it?�
Okay, it�s not as good as getting panties thrown on stage, but you have to start somewhere!
This book talks about experts and how they use every fallacy known and probably make up a few of their own in order to get you to smoke their brands, eat at their restaurants and buy the toxic substances that have already killed hundreds of people, even after the stories break in a news outlet.
Cigarettes getting a bad rap? Have an actor dress up in a doctor�s uniform and talk about how a particular brand relaxes you and goes down easy.
Had an oil tanker crash and spew its black substance in the ocean? Buy some commercials showing how you moved the plant three feet away from a fox burrow. (And by the way, did you know Condoleezza Rice has a fucking oil tanker named after her? Though no one is going to accuse her of spreading any black substance.)
Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Tradition, use Straw Man and False Dilemmas and Lack of Proportion, Ad Hominem, and anything else the stupid masses will buy, or at least believe. It�s all here, and it�s not presented in a painfully boring format for a change.
And of course, right after reading this, I spend the next two weeks dealing with so-called experts, once at traffic school on the 22nd and then at the dentist yesterday. The driving instructor hurled statistic after statistic at us, none of which applied to me, as his major tirade involved speeding, which nobody is going to accuse me of.
I was able to recognize every fallacy as he listed them off, as I waited desperately for them to show Red Asphalt, or some other accident-filled bloodfest. Finally, nearly eight hours later, they start the film, showing those crash test dummies that were popular in the late eighties. Shortly thereafter, they move on to some accidents filmed under supervised condition, involving live volunteers. I start to smile for the first time in nearly eight hours.
And then the guy shut off the film, saying that the rest of it is pretty gory. There�s no doubt I was glad to be out of there, but man, what a tease.
As for the dentist, I heard what is probably the two things you never want to hear while you�re stuck in that chair. The first came from the dentist, as she was drilling out a silver filling. After a while, she stops, looks closer in my mouth, and then mumbles to herself, saying, �What the fuck is that?�
The second phrase, directed toward her assistant, was �Honey, you�ve got that on backward.�
In my expert opinion, these people can blow me. Try to find a fallacy in that.
