by david allan van nostrand | Sep 15, 2025 | Advertising, Misinformation traps, Shaky Science
When they called themselves the Sales Department, they had only one job. It was selling the company’s products. Salesmen, saleswomen, and salespersons who missed their sales quotas lost their jobs.* Now that they changed their name to marketers, their job is to...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 2, 2024 | Human Behavior, Misinformation traps, Shaky Science
What Is a Quack? The noise a duck makes. An untrained person who pretends to be a physician and dispenses medical advice and treatment. A person who pretends to have skill, knowledge, qualification, or credentials they do not possess. A person who deceives others to...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 5, 2024 | Case Study, How to tell good research from bad, Misinformation traps, Voodoo Statistics
When I was living in Trinidad and Tobago (locally abbreviated as TT), I taught interactive seminars in Human Behavior for MBAs at the University of the West Indies Graduate Business School. We met Saturday mornings because all the students were employed full-time in...
by david allan van nostrand | Feb 12, 2024 | Assumptions, Misinformation traps, The Myopia of Experts
The company was facing some unfamiliar challenges. For the first time in his career, the CEO brought in outsiders to investigate the issues. At the end of their engagement, the outsiders delivered a report that overturned several of the company’s dearly-held...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 10, 2023 | InterWeb, Items in the News, Misinformation traps, Using Information
An article by Gabriel Daros in Rest of World discusses a recent trend in product reviews in Brazil. For as little as $4 each, freelancers create scripted product review videos. The videos are in Portuguese, one minute long, and appear to be real customers reviewing...
by david allan van nostrand | May 1, 2023 | Fads, Misinformation traps, The world around us
Most dictionaries agree that to bamboozle someone is to deceive, defraud and hoodwink them. No one knows for sure where the word comes from. Some say it began with a Scottish word meaning to confound. Others say it’s from the French word for baboon, which means to...
