THEY SAY........

I have met many THEY SAYers from different walks of life - relatives, friends, social acquaintances, business associates, broadcasters, newspapers - in fact a THEY SAYer can be any conveyor of knowledge. Here are some examples from the THEY SAYers' knowledge base:

* THEY SAY the winters will get colder and the summers will get hotter.

* THEY SAY tsunamis and earthquakes will become more frequent.

* THEY SAY eating carrots helps you see in the dark.

* THEY SAY you should eat five vegetables a day to keep fit and healthy.

* THEY SAY alternative treatments such as special diets, herbal potions and faith healing can cure apparently terminal illness.

* THEY SAY (or rather SAID thirty years ago) North Sea oil would run out within thirty years........and it didn't!

The examples are endless and the last example of thirty years ago is when I started following and getting thoroughly pxxxxd off with THEY SAYers! The punch lines are usually employed to support an argument, so a mother trying to encourage her child to eat his carrots might quote the benefit of being able to see in the dark. As the child gets older and plucks up courage to challenge his mother, perhaps by asking "Who are THEY?", a typical response is "It's a well known fact!".

Well who the fxxk are THEY? A very good question! Newspapers can be a source of THEY particularly the 'popular press' that creates news rather than just reporting it. TV all-day news programmes often flash up one-liners between programmes to whet the appetite with headlines such as "Researchers believe that drinking alcohol in moderation can reduce the risk of heart disease" or conversely, "Studies show a strong link between alcohol consumption and cancer".

As I grow older, I like to think I am getting wiser. In my view wisdom includes looking at things objectively. Purists would say that's impossible because any opinion, by definition, is subjective. OK, we'll my response to the purist is that we should form opinions on as much evidence as possible, rather like a court of law does before arriving at a verdict. So when a THEY SAYer fires a shot across your bow, the counter attack could be "Where's the evidence?". If the evidence is "I read it in the newspaper" or "I saw it on TV", well sorry but that's not good enough. Francis Bacon said "It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than negatives." In other words, we believe what we want to believe and we have a tendency to find evidence that supports our pet theories. So if the THEY SAYers' 'evidence' cannot be supported by well documented and validated research programmes then it should be dismissed out of court! Maybe the mother's statement to the child who won't eat his carrots should be "There are those who believe eating carrots can improve night vision but I know of no reputable evidence to support this theory". The trouble is that such a statement is unlikely to affect the child's dislike of the taste of carrots, so if mum doesn't want the child to grow up into a faddy eater, maybe a better tactic is "Take it or leave it, there's nothing else on offer!".

Well as I write, the sun is setting and THEY SAY a blog written in daylight hours attracts a greater readership than dusk-to-dawn material........BULLSHIT!