Warp wrote:
> scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
>>>  Why do so many people think like this? What is the psychological 
>>> phenomenon
>>> behind this kind of thinking?
> 
>> In most cases I suspect it is because the person just can't been bothered to 
>> research it, they have more important things in their life to worry about 
>> than whether some cool-sounding fad medicine is scientifically proven to 
>> work or not.  Hey they might not even realise there is such a thing as a 
>> scientific test.
> 
>   I specifically talked about people who keep believing in it even *after*
> they have been told about the better tests. In other words, they refuse to
> believe in the accuracy of the scientifical tests.
> 

Information weighting, though I don't know what the psychological term
for it is.

For the same reason someone who thinks scientifically holds 10 studies
of 1000 people each in higher regard to 10 studies of 10 people total,
some people hold a study that is physically closer to them to be
important. 1000 people they do not know is not as important to them as
the one person it does work for. Or they do not not understand the math
involved once the sample size gets past a certain point.

There is also the fact that people have not evolved to think of every
other human on the same level. They consider their friends and family
more than someone they do not know; see Dunbar and any other
evolutionary psychology. So, 2 people they know had this medicine work.
10,000 people they do not know or never met did not. Since they weight
there friends and family over several thousands or millions of
strangers, the balance tilts towards believing in this stuff.

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