unSpun_ Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation - Brooks Jackson [0]
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction A World of Spin
Chapter 1 From Snake Oil to Emu Oil
Chapter 2 A Bridesmaid’s Bad Breath Warning Signs of Trickery
Chapter 3 “Tall” Coffees and Assault Weapons Tricks of the Deception Trade
Chapter 4 UFO Cults and Us Why We Get Spun
Chapter 5 Facts Can Save Your Life
Chapter 6 The Great Crow Fallacy Finding the Best Evidence
Chapter 7 Osama, Ollie, and Al The Internet Solution
Chapter 8 Was Clarence Darrow a Creationist? How to Be Sure
Conclusion Staying unSpun
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
For Beverly and Bob
Introduction
A World of Spin
WE LIVE IN A WORLD OF SPIN.
It flies at us in the form of misleading commercials for products and political candidates and about public policy matters. It comes from businesses, political leaders, lobbying groups, and political parties. Millions are deceived every day, buying products, voting for candidates, supporting policies and even wars—all because of spin.
“Spin” is a polite word for deception. Spinners mislead by means that range from subtle omissions to outright lies. Spin paints a false picture of reality by bending facts, mischaracterizing the words of others, ignoring or denying crucial evidence, or just “spinning a yarn”—by making things up.
Some degree of spin can be considered harmless, as when a person puts his best foot forward in hopes that we won’t notice that the other shoe may be a bit scuffed. But we’re not writing here about mere puffery, nor are we criticizing advocates who argue strongly and honestly for their side; we’re talking about outright dishonesty, misrepresentation, and a lack of respect for facts. We see these far too commonly today in politics and business alike.
Spin is tolerated and even admired in some circles. In Washington, a good spin doctor is lauded, much like a twenty-game winner in baseball. But we believe voters and consumers need to recognize spin when it is used against them, just as good batters spot the spin on a curveball. If they don’t recognize spin, they risk not only buying the wrong cold remedy or the wrong car but also going into the voting booth with false notions in their heads about the candidates.
Spin misleads people about matters as trivial as a jar of beauty cream or as deadly serious as cancer. Readers may find our examples variously outrageous and amusing, but we hope all of them are instructive. Our purpose in writing this book is to give readers some tools for recognizing and avoiding spin, and finding solid facts.
Both parties spin, but we’ll start, arbitrarily, with a Republican example. To illustrate what we mean when we say that spin is deception, consider an appearance of Karl Rove, senior adviser to President George W. Bush, at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., on May 15, 2006. Rove gave a vigorously upbeat picture of the American economy, and nothing he said was absolutely false, yet the overall impression he tried to create was at times so divorced from reality as to seem unhinged.
Rove said, for example: “Real disposable income has risen almost 14 percent since President Bush took office. The Dow Jones industrial average is near its all-time high. And since the 2003 tax cuts have been passed, asset values, including homes and stocks, have grown by $13 trillion.”
All that was true, and a listener might well have concluded that the income of every American had risen. But Rove failed to mention that since Bush took office, poverty had worsened significantly, millions of workers had lost their health insurance, and real wages were stagnant for rank-and-file payroll employees. The “real disposable income” he cited was a statistic that measures the total increase in income, not how that increase is distributed. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, real income (after inflation) for the typical U.S. household had fallen by 3.6 percent during Bush’s first four years in office—a loss of $1,670 in 2004 dollars. The income gains of which Rove spoke were going almost exclusively to those in the upper half of society,