What does having scientific inquiry guard us against?
Anyone trying to give you misleading infornation. In scientific inquiry, the information has to be tested (usually a number of times by different people) to see if the same results always occur, and to determine the probablility is of getting a different result. If you look at advertisements (let’s say for diet ads for a weight loss pill as an example), you’ll see celebrities saying “It worked for me, I lost __ pounds”. The companies are counting on the fame of the celebrity to get people to buy their product. Somewhere in fine print it may also say “Results not typical.”. Nor does it take into consideration other factors, such as whether the person exercised or not (maybe they would have lost weight regardless of the pills), what types of foods they ate or how much, or the initial weight of the people involved (as an example, it’s more likely for a 400 pound person to lose 40 pounds than a 160 pound person – perhaps a better indication of effectiveness of the product would be % body w
