Larry Schwartz reminds us of the use of numbers in the ads by drug companies and others. You may remember that almost all the numbers you hear are percentages stating how much the particular drug makes things better, such as "50% less risk". Such a number is probably true, but it is largely irrelevant as the ad doesn't mention the number of actual occurrences. For example, an ad might claim an improvement of 100%, but the actual improvement is from two in a million to one in a million occurrences. Schwartz has a number of interesting examples.
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