About 9 years ago, I posted a series of articles about the Wansink scandal — he was a well-known food researcher at Cornell who built a profitable reputation out of fudging data, p-hacking, and creating phony food myths that would “go viral”. All of his training was in marketing, not science. If you read any of those ghastly commercial web sites that have a long series of cheesy click-bait ads at the end, you can find that some his dishonest claims still live on. His career doesn’t — he abruptly announced his retirement as the investigations were heating up, and to this day suffered no other consequences, other than early retirement, for poisoning the scientific literature on the psychology of food with garbage.
I just ran into a good summary of his career. It’s been a good long while, I’d almost forgotten him.
The lesson I take away from this is that marketing is not a legitimate discipline — it’s a framework for more effecting lying, and we ought not to be encouraging people to study it, and we should mistrust any conclusions drawn from their work.
For example, Gad Saad hasn’t been run out of town on a rail yet, but he should be. He’s a marketing professor who has put up an evolutionary psychology facade. Don’t trust anything he says.
“The lesson I take away from this is that marketing is not a legitimate discipline…”
This reminds me of one of my favorite bits from Bill Hicks, which begins, “If anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself…” It goes on from there but’s that’s the gist. A couple of different versions of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXi-9kA4ERM
I’d be OK with degrees in “marketing” being offered, as long as they were correctly labelled: “Effective Lying” would do!
I dunno if I would dismiss marketing altogether. It has its place for understanding how best to promote or convey information that itself might be beneficial.
I recall Travis Kelce promoting the combination of flu and COVID shot together and I thought it a nice touch. Not sure how effective that campaign was. Or years ago guilting parents into giving their kids HPV shots to prevent cancer.
Marketing for marketing sake seems hollow though.
Never heard of Brian Wansink. I try to follow reputable nutrition influencers myself who dig into the actual research others have done with appropriately weighted grains of salt.
Anyone who looks like Boris Johnson should be mistrusted.
Just so you know: your link in “series of articles about the Wansink scandal” just goes right to this page.
John, you’re correct.
Google finds them easily with a site-specific search:
site:https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ Brian Wansink
[um, as one string
site:https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ Brian Wansink– I forgot the preprocessor here massages]Richard Feyman said that he distrusted advertising because it was necessarily dishonest.
The most racist textbook I ever knew was a consumer behavior textbook.
It was filled with self-fulfilling prophecy.
It neglected to note that if the only thing people can afford is crap, that’s what they’ll buy.
Social circumstance was left out of the equation and the creators of this nonsense felt it gave them license to sell more crap.
…the psychology of food …
An unfortunately neglected topic, except by corporate vendors.
For a while I ran into a lot of food faddists – proselytizing vegetarians, macrobiotics fans*, etc. I kept thinking it was rather a pity that Sigmund Freud never lived through a famine (say, during WWI): he would surely have come up with wrong opinions about food obsessions, but would at least have put the question on the table so that others could do better.
*Those who’ve lived with them know why others call ’em “macrochaoticists”…
@5 & @6-7 the Johns
That’s what I though at first reflexively, but of course this post would be first in order and other PZ posts from the past subsequent if you scroll down below this post.
Those attacking marketing are missing the point. You must include all kinds of propaganda, such as public relations, public announcements, television and other visual media, news industries, etc. It’s all of a kind: manipulation, not information, attitudes not truth.
Mr. Wilkins,
I’m not sure how to break this news to you, but a guy who was on a TV show and claimed a shit-ton of prowess he had no right to claim is the president of the United States of America.
[Sorry, John, PZ, but hey]
fishy, that is not responsive to his actual claim.
And, https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/7553-john-wilkins
(Now, I may be full of shit, of course, but I am prety sure)
—
Hemidactylus, indeed. Still, what I wrote is true. ;)
Wilkins has entered the chat 🙂
#14 John Morales. Discussing an argument in the famous Richard Dawkins Muslima form of if a is true b and c and d are also true and therefor discussion of a can be derailed has been demonstrated to have no utility. The responded was the original Muslima argument was responding. Ironically by adding x as another irrelevant derailer.
I apologise for my country for it’s low hiring academic hiring standards.
francesconic, I am not sure to what you refer.
I was right here when Dawkins popped in with his bon mot, however, and I quickly inferred it really was him, despite original disbelief from many.
Anyway.
You know how many here blame the Democratic party’s choice of messaging and selection and focus for its recent electoral doldrums? Well, what they are advocating is, ahem, better marketing. :)
(Simple shift of perspective, same reality)
francesconic @16
At risk of exceeding my 20% allotment and other things…Huh?
I was responding merely to say that the two Johns before Wilkins came in may not have realized one could have scrolled down in PZ’s link to see other posts about Brian Wansink PZ had done. @14 John kinda acknowledged that I think. @13 fishy kinda diminished the @12 John and @14 John was trying to provide some proper introduction for someone who has published a book on the philosophical aspects of the species concept I actually own (or have the license for it on my devices).
Not sure why you have to apologize for your country so that’s confusing. Or how Dear Muslima fits the context here.
It is really cool to see Wilkins reply though. He needs no introduction for me.