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the Ab Force belt, which caused electrically stimulated muscle twitches around the belly. The Federal Trade Commission cracked down on similar products that overtly claimed that their electronic muscle stimulation devices would cause users to lose fat, reduce their belly size by inches, and create well-defined, “washboard” or “sixpack” abdominal muscles without exercising. In some of the most frequently aired infomercials on national cable channels in late 2001 and early 2002, sellers made claims including, “Now you can get rock hard abs with no sweat…. Lose 4 Inches in 30 Days Guaranteed…. 10 Minutes =600 Sit-Ups.” Launching what it called “Project AbSurd,” the FTC got those blatantly false claims off TV and got the marketers to agree to pay $5 million. (They had sold $83 million worth of belts, the FTC said.)

But the Ab Force marketer persisted. He said his own advertising never made specific claims—which was true: it just showed images of well-muscled, bare-chested men and lean, shapely women, with close-ups of their trim waists and well-defined abdominals. And, of course, he had named his device Ab Force. The case went to a hearing at the FTC, where regulators presented some convincing evidence of how an unstated message can still get across. The Ab Force ads were shown to groups of consumers, 58 percent of whom later said the ads were telling them that the belt would cause users to lose inches around the waist, while 65 percent said they got the message that the product would give users well-defined abdominal muscles. The FTC’s administrative law judge ruled that the unstated message implied by the ad, combined with the Ab Force name, constituted false advertising.

When the full commission voted unanimously to uphold the judge’s order, it said the marketer had managed to sell $19 million of his belts even though his ads made no specific claim. “It illustrates how false and unsubstantiated claims can be communicated indirectly but with utter clarity—to the detriment of consumers and in violation of the laws this Commission enforces,” the FTC’s decision stated.

When you see or hear something being strongly implied but not stated outright, ask yourself, “Why do they have to lay it between the lines like that? Why don’t they just come out and say it?” Often there’s a very good reason: what the speaker wants you to believe isn’t true.

Chapter 4

UFO Cults and Us

Why We Get Spun

A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

—LEON FESTINGER, et al., When Prophecy Fails (1956)

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY OTHER PEOPLE ARE SO UNREASONABLE and hard to convince? Why is it that they disregard hard facts that prove you’re right and they’re wrong? The fact is, we humans aren’t wired to think very rationally. That’s been confirmed recently by brain scans, but our irrational reaction to hard evidence has been the subject of scholarly study for some time. Consider one of the most famous scientific observations in all of psychology, the story of a UFO cult that was infiltrated by the social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues half a century ago.

They observed a small group of true believers whose leader was a woman the authors called Marian Keech, in a place they called Lake City. Mrs. Keech said she had received messages from beings called Guardians on Planet Clarion saying that North America would be destroyed by a flood, but that her followers would be taken to safety on a UFO a few hours earlier, at midnight on December 21, 1954. Members of her cult quit jobs, sold possessions, dropped out of school, and prepared for the space journey by removing metal objects from their clothing as instructed by Mrs. Keech. They gathered in her living room on the appointed night, and waited.

Midnight came and went, and of course neither the flood nor the promised spacecraft arrived. But did the faithful look at this incontrovertible evidence and conclude, “Oh, well,