Question

Think about how diet and weight-loss companies advertise. How do they use bias to sell their products? How would you use skepticism to evaluate the data that these companies use in their advertisements?

Answer 1

Diet and weight-loss products use heavy bias in their advertisements. They generally claim that they are the fastest or the only way for effective weight loss. They also often use before-and-after photos as evidence to show how people change by using their products. Most of the time, they show only the body of the person, so it’s questionable whether the before-and-after photos are even of the same person. If they show the results of a research study, we can check who funded the study. If the diet or weight-loss company founded the study, then we can check whether an unbiased group replicated the study before accepting it as a fact. If not, we can see how well the study was designed and whether the company controlled other factors such as the diet or exercise of the participants.

Answer 2

Diet and weightloss advertising puts super skinny models and actors/actresses saying they lost an insane amount of weight using their product. That is completely bias because they aren’t just going to say the model lost weight through other methods of weight loss because they are advertising THEIR product.
I would use skepticism evaluating these ads because I would be skeptical believing that someone lost 200 pounds in 2 months drinking some supplement.