unSpun

by Brooks Jackson

  The BBC and CBS news stories—read in full—provide pretty strong warnings about the stuff being sold on the Web, but they are still secondhand sources. We can do better. On the Phytopharm website, we read, “The necessary clinical trials and other studies to ensure the safety of the [Hoodia] extract will take a few years before a product will be available.” The site says that the company is just starting those trials, in collaboration with its partner Unilever. That tells us that this diet drug is far from ready for market.

  At Phytopharm’s site we also look for the “clinical study” conducted by the company in 2001 and mentioned in news reports and on many of the Hoodia websites. There is no report published in a medical journal—just a news release. It says the company ran a test of nineteen overweight men, giving half of them their patented “P57” Hoodia extract for fifteen days, while the other half got a placebo. The group getting P57 were said to have “a statistically significant decrease in daily calorie intake,” a reduction of as much as 1,000 calories per day. We also learn from reading the company’s press releases that before it hooked up with Unilever it had a deal with Pfizer to develop a commercial product from P57, but Pfizer backed out of the deal in 2003. Why would a major company drop a miracle weight-loss drug if it really had promise?

  We’ve scouted up all this information for free, in a few minutes. For a small fee, you could have read on the Consumer Reports website an article briefly summarizing some of what we’ve said here, stating that there’s “very scanty” evidence that Hoodia works, and concluding that “we do not recommend taking these supplements.” (For $26 a year, we consider a subscription to Consumer Reports magazine and the website to be a bargain.)

  When we weigh this evidence, we find that there’s good reason to ignore the Hoodia hype, at least for now. Our TV correspondents, Stahl and Mangold, both gave us impressive anecdotal accounts of eating fresh cactus, but we won’t find any of that at the supermarket. A British company, reputable enough to have partnered first with Pfizer and currently with Unilever, says we won’t be able to buy their product for years. What’s being offered for sale in the United States is claimed to be the cactus in powdered form, but we have no reliable way of knowing whether it’s really Hoodia or just sawdust, or—more important—whether Hoodia powder works like fresh Hoodia. The testimonials we see on sellers’ websites should be disregarded: we don’t know who these people are, whether they really lost weight, or whether, if they did lose weight, the loss resulted from the pills. Furthermore, we have little idea of what harm these products might cause. Phytopharm’s test group included only nineteen males. What if women took it? What if one person in every thousand experiences a life-threatening reaction? What happens if people take it for six months instead of just two weeks? Does it cause liver damage? What if Phytopharm sponsored other studies that produced less impressive results, and hasn’t released them? We don’t know.

  Respect for Facts

  We’re not surprised that advertisers and politicians try to deceive us. Who can blame them for fabricating, twisting, exaggerating, or distorting the facts when we customers and citizens reward them so regularly with our money and votes? We should know that products like “Exercise in a Bottle” or Internet-advertised Hoodia won’t make fat melt away without effort on our part. We even joke about how untrustworthy politicians are when they seek our votes. And yet enough people buy the products and the candidates to make all the spinning pay off.

  These hucksters and partisans may not even realize how badly they are misleading us. Quite often, they seem to believe their own spin, even when a bit of rudimentary fact-checking shows it to be distorted or false. Remember the “your brain on politics” scans? In true believers, the portions of the brain used in rational thought just didn’t light up. But from the consumer’s standpoint—or the voter’s—it doesn’t matter whether the deception and spinning are deliberate. Either way, getting the facts wrong can cause us to waste six bucks on a cold remedy that may not work, or cause us to cheer for a war that doesn’t look like such a good idea once we find out our leaders got the basic facts wrong.

  So what can we do? Certainly an ordinary citizen can’t be expected to outguess the CIA about the secret military capabilities of foreign nations. And maybe it’s no big tragedy if we overpay for beauty products that don’t really make wrinkles disappear. Indeed, maybe just thinking that wrinkles are gone is worth the money to some, and they might not mind being deceived. But generally, we’re better off getting facts right, and we should try to get them right as consistently as we can.

  Our advice boils down to two words: respect facts.

  You’ll be money ahead, for one thing. A little fact-checking is often all it takes to expose the advertising hype of an emu-oil saleswoman, a “clinically proven” cold remedy that isn’t really proven, or an ex-con selling a book about cancer cures on late-night infomercials.

  You’ll save yourself time and annoyance if you develop the habits of mind we have recommended here. Respect for facts means keeping your mind engaged, so you won’t fall for the next psychology student who cuts in line at the copy machine with a nonreason like “I have to make some copies,” or for the many other nonreasons and the bogus logic that we’re confronted with every day. Respect for facts also means checking your own assumptions. You could live years longer if you are a woman who respects the facts about what most women really die of, and then follows the medical advice that reduces those risks. You could avoid dying young if you are a teenager who respects the fact that teen drivers are four times more likely than older drivers to crash. Most teens don’t; they tend to rate their own skills higher than those of their peers.

  When it comes to politics, you can have the satisfaction of knowing you chose your candidate on the basis of facts, not just TV-spot fantasies. It might not change the way you vote, but then again, it might. Either way, you can be more confident you’ve made the right choice.

  A greater respect for facts among our leaders could well have avoided a protracted and bloody war in Iraq. CIA officials failed to practice active open-mindedness, while the president and his top advisers pushed for evidence that would confirm their assumptions, not for evidence that might disprove them and show war to be unnecessary. The opposition showed little respect for facts as well: only half a dozen senators and a handful of House members even bothered to read the full National Intelligence Estimate prior to voting to authorize force. The New York Times apologized in 2004 for failing to report more skeptically in the months before the war.

  We don’t expect that one voter will change the way presidents or CIA directors or news organizations do their jobs. We don’t expect that a single customer can bring about an end to bogus sales pitches. However, we do think that a movement of citizens can change these things. Start with the little things, such as what cold remedy to buy. Practice the habits of mind and the fact-checking skills we’ve suggested here. Apply those methods to more important matters. Then demand better. Don’t reward those who disrespect facts, by buying their products or by voting for them. Do insist that they respect facts, respect you, and respect your intelligence and good sense. If enough of us do that, we believe that eventually our leaders will follow. When a group you support gets something wrong, speak up and ask them to correct it, as many NARAL supporters did when their group ran that ad we mentioned falsely accusing John Roberts of endorsing violence. If all sides in the political debate did that, the quality of discussion would rise.

  You think our theory is goofy? It’s up to you to show us the evidence. Try what we’re suggesting. Prove us wrong.

  *1 Famous people often are misquoted (see “False Quotes” box on chapter 7), but this quote is genuine. Tversky’s collaborator, Nobel Prize–winning Princeton professor Daniel Kahneman, told us that both he and Tversky often repeated the remark in conversation and that Tversky probably came up with it first.

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  *2 There’s a scholarly argument to be made that ev
erybody has some sort of bias, and therefore there’s no possibility of a neutral viewpoint. In a philosophical sense that may well be so, but it’s not relevant here. As a practical matter we find we’re more likely to get trustworthy information from disinterested sources than from advocates.

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  *3 In 2006, it was estimated that only 0.3 percent of those who died that year would be subject to the estate tax, because the first $2 million of each estate was excluded from taxation. In 1999, only the first $600,000 was excluded, and the richest 1.3 percent paid tax, as noted in Chapter 3.

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  Acknowledgments

  A jointly authored book is invariably written in the voice of one of its authors. In academic circles, at least, that person’s name appears first on the title page. The lead author is usually the one who has done the heavy lifting on the project, as well. Both are the case with unSpun. As the second author, I can certify both of those statements as fact.

  Although not unheard-of, collaboration between an academic and a veteran of a wire service (The Associated Press), a major newspaper (The Wall Street Journal), and cable news (CNN) is a bit unusual. We are not sure how it works, and on most days are at least somewhat surprised that it does. Reducing the collaboration to its essence, Brooks brings to this book (and to FactCheck.org, which he directs) a nose for news, a talent for crafting fluent prose on deadline, and a desire to write on or near the Chesapeake Bay; I bring bibliographies of scholarly studies, a passing knowledge of how ads deceive, and an eagerness to add cryptic notes to anything Brooks has written. And we share the belief that Signe Wilkinson is an editorial cartoonist par excellence.

  Brooks and I cooked up the idea of FactCheck.org out of our common concern about the seeming demise of fact in politics and out of respect for the deadlines and day-to-day pressures of journalism that make it difficult for reporters in already overstretched and understaffed media outlets to take on the task. We decided to write unSpun because we both believe that smart, informed citizens know some important things about detecting deception that can be captured in book form.

  The third person on our team is Signe Wilkinson, who not only created the cartoons that you see throughout the book but also acted as our designated critic-in-chief. The fourth is our Random House editor, Tim Bartlett. Tim, who edited an earlier book of Kathleen’s, both broadened the scope of unSpun and pruned its length. And he summoned more patience that any author can reasonably expect of an editor as we slowed the march of the book toward publication by pleading for the time to put it through an additional revision.

  We are grateful as well to the FactCheck.org team in D.C., including Justin Bank, James Ficaro (who migrated to Philadelphia for law school), and Emi Kolawole, and to Miriam White, Jeff Gottfried, and Josh Gesell at the Annenberg Policy Center office in Philadelphia for sourcing and giving everything a second and sometimes third check. Emi in particular deserves our thanks for the endless hours she spent reviewing each word of the book for factual accuracy. Her work kept a number of errors from making their way into print. Any that remain are our responsbility alone. We also thank Jolanta Benal, whose uncommon attention to detail demonstrated that good copy editing is not a lost art after all.

  Finally, we couldn’t have written this book without the indulgence of the two to whom we dedicate it: Bev, who has put up with Brooks for nearly thirty-four years, and Bob, who has done the same with me for just over thirty-eight. And in a world of competing claims, that one is a certain fact.

  KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON

  Philadelphia

  October 2006

  To what Kathleen says I would add this: I am grateful to her for allowing me the honor of being “lead” author on this book, but it has been a true collaboration. The words here are mostly mine, but the thoughts and ideas expressed here come from many months of talking and messaging between the two of us. Many of them, and perhaps most, would never have occurred to me working alone.

  BROOKS JACKSON

  California, Maryland

  January 2007

  SOURCES

  To make this book as easy to read as possible, we’ve mostly omitted formal footnotes, end notes, and appendixes giving full details on the source of each fact or quote. We believe most of our sources are clearly stated in the text of the book. For those wishing more formal, academic sourcing, however, a full set of footnotes may be found at www.FactCheck.org/unSpun. We will also attempt to post on that site any relevant updates, clarifications, or (should the need arise) corrections.

  About the Authors

  BROOKS JACKSON runs the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s award-winning website FactCheck.org and was an investigative reporter for The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN. He is the author of Honest Graft: Big Money and the American Political Process and Broken Promise: Why the Federal Election Commission Failed. He lives in Washington, D.C.

  KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author or coauthor of eleven books, including Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy, Packaging the Presidency, and The Press Effect.

  A Random House Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2007 by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jackson, Brooks.

  unSpun : finding facts in a world of disinformation / by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

  p. cm.

  1. Deception—United States. 2. Deceptive advertising—United States. 3. Communication in politics—United States. 4. Truthfulness and falsehood—United States. I. Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. II. Title. III. Title: Finding facts in a world of disinformation.

  BF637.D42J33 2007

  177'.3—dc22 2006050437

  www.atrandom.com

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-582-8

  v3.0