Essential Cybersecurity Science

Appendix A. Understanding Bad Science, Scientific Claims, and Marketing Hype

There is a pop song from the 1980s called “She Blinded Me with Science” that plays on the notion of deliberately hiding truth behind real or made-up science. In this book, I talked about the amazing benefits of science to everyday cybersecurity. Unfortunately, not every scientific claim that you see in the news or from vendors is as reputable as it should be. This appendix will look briefly at the ways in which people are misled, manipulated, or deceived by real or bogus science, scientific claims, and marketing trickery.

Scientific skepticism is a healthy practice of questioning scientific results and claims. In particular, it often means discerning whether the conclusions are the result of the scientific method and are supported by empirical research. This can be very challenging even in the best circumstances, and especially difficult when advertisers and marketers might be appealing to your emotions instead of rationality.

Vendors and marketers sometimes appeal to people’s scientific gullibility. As discussed early in the book, people respect and trust science. Unfortunately, people can also be over trusting and thus deceived by scientific claims if they don’t possess the experience, healthy suspicion, and rational thinking. One academic study actually found that people were swayed by advertisements with graphs and formulas just because they seemed scientific:¹

The appearance of being scientific can increase ...