"The experiment had revealed an “extremely undesirable, and previously unidentified, side effect of warnings: the more often older adults were told that a claim was false, the more likely they were to remember it erroneously as true after a three day delay,” they wrote. (While the researchers fixated on older adults, the data itself shows that this is a cross-generational issue.)
"People walked into that study pretty sure that shark fins didn’t treat arthritis. They were told repeatedly that shark fins do not treat arthritis. And they walked out of the study believing that shark fins treat arthritis.",,,
"We need to go on an informational diet. We need to become more discerning with what we want to know and what we need to know."
END FTFA
IOW follow Rolf Dobelli's advice and "Stop reading the news!":
I aced algebra and geometry in high school. Next was trigonometry and we had a new teacher who espoused the use of a thick pink and black trig book. It was absolutely alien, as well as ugly, to me. Once I realized the sine, cosine and tangent and co-relations were defined as geometric ratios, I put my mind at rest and determined to use my geometry skills to the max to avoid memorization. The teacher accepted my somewhat odd methodology for the time being.
That was good for a half-semester but then a formidable classroom opponent arose: a "new" boy who had been educated in another state using the very same textbook! I realized I'd have to commit at least a handful of the most useful trig identities to memory to solve problems quickly and remain at the head of the class. A weekend of furious comparison and selection ensued, but that was enough to carry me across the finish line in trig class.
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