The Onion's Article

The Onion’s article “Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms of Pseudoscience”, sound like the script to a typical television commercial. The article talked about shoe insoles that “Establish a correspondence between every point on the human foot, with another part of the body, enabling their soles to heal their entire bodies as they walk.” They also talked about “scientific-sounding “information supporting their new insoles. I have seen commercials for shoe insoles on television that sound just like this. How are we to know that the scientific jargon that they throw into these commercials is accurate? These persuasion techniques seem to work, or else they would not sell any products. In the article, there was a woman who talked about wearing the insoles for seven weeks after having twisted her ankle, and now it has remarkable healed, with no pain while she walks. I have sprained my ankles many times, and the doctors there, always told me that it would take six to eight weeks to heal, so with this in mind, the woman’s foot would have been completely healed. People who have never sprained an ankle, or had another similar injury, would not know that this is the approximate healing time, so they would believe the woman, and probably think she is a reliable witness as to how well the insoles work. Keeping this in mind, we should not believe television commercials just because they might sound scientifically correct. Do some research or ask someone who knows before committing to buying a product that you are not sure about.
Quotes:
Science and Society by: Richard W Grinnell Pages 19-21 in an article published by The Onion entitled “Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms of