19: On Creating Mischief
The author asserts that "When a statement is couched in terms such as 'Neuroscience proves that...', it gains a lot of credibility, even if it is total rubbish." As such, it is fertile ground for charlatans and the half-witted who, while meaning well, do not have sufficient understanding of the techniques they are using.
This can do a great deal of mischief to the marketer who, desperate to find a new or better angle, turns to neuroscience. It can also do a great deal of damage to the reputation of neuroscience itself: the earnest and knowledgeable practitioner, who does not offer grandiose claims of miracle cures, is lumped in with the quacks, and the true value neuroscience offers today, and the potentially greater value it can offer in future, is denigrated.
The Hidden Persuaders
"The Hidden Persuaders" was a book written in 1957 about subliminal techniques that has had a significant impact on the advertising industry. It was written by a journalist named Vance Packard, who had absolutely no credentials in psychology or medicine, who did what journalists typically do: used a smidgeon of truth to create a dramatic and dramatic story. From a scientific perspective, it was complete hogwash.
There is no scientific basis for the notion of subliminal messaging - messaging that is beneath the threshold of perception, which is not consciously detected but yet reaches the subconscious mind and compels a person to take actions. While it has likely been experimented with by advertisers as well as military intelligence, it is largely the stuff of myth: few who refer to these techniques can provide specific references of reliable evidence, and its allegedly use is conveniently treated as a conspiratorial secret, for which evidence is allegedly unobtainable.
Packard's notion of subliminal messaging was based on James Vicary's experiment in a movie theater in Fort Lee, NJ, in which a tachistoscope was used to project the messages "Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coke" for 1/3000th of a second a five-second intervals. Vicary )who also had no credentials in psychology, but was a marketer with an associates' degree in business) asserted that sales of popcorn increased 57.8% and sales of coke increased 18.1% during the test. In 1962, Vicary admitted that not only were the results fabricated, but the experiment had never been conducted - it was a complete hoax.
Even so, public clamor continued, which the author attributes to the atmosphere of paranoia and distrust during the Cold War era, along with Freud's concept of the subconscious and lots of talk about brainwashing. Laws were passed in the UK and Australia to ban the use of subliminal advertising, and the topic remained a legend that was accepted as fact among the advertising community.
The author fears that much of the same mischief is being perpetrated about neuromarketing: the claims are very similar to those made of subliminal advertising, and the science that backs them is just as distorted and thin.
Gullibility Meets Sensationalism
The author refers to a study done by Weisberg (2008) in whiuch subjects were presented excepts of descriptions of psychological phenomena, followed by explanations that were based on theory, based on sound research, and based on irrelevant research. Except for those with expert knowledge, the explanations based on irrelevant information were considered to be as satisfying as those based on sound research.
Ultimately, if a source seems to be authoritative and presents numerical data, people without expertise in the subject will happily accept it as valid, even if there is no logical connection between the facts presented and the statements they allegedly support. And therein lies the problem.
There have been a number of articles in the poplar media that portray neuromarketing as a method of identifying the "buy button" in the unconscious mind of consumers to bypass their free will and better judgment. The scientific "evidence" presented in such articles is scant, specious, and often entirely irrelevant to the assertions.
And just as the notion of subliminal advertising did not dissipate when Vicary admitted his experiment was a hoax, so is it likely that misconceptions about neuroscience, even among fairly well-educated individuals who lack expertise in the area, will perpetuate in spite of their dismissal by experts in the neuroscience community.
Unfortunately, panic gets more attention that logic, and claims that "neuroscience proves" lead naive readers to accept the most specious connections as factual. Articles in Newsweek, CNN, and other popular media outlets continue to pump out sensational stories that misrepresent the capabilities of neurocience to an audience that is willing to believe anything that seems to be factual.