“You have your evidence. Now do you believe me?”

And (if it weren´t for you recognising the man portrayed in it) that picture to the right would apparently serve as ´proof´ that this statement would be true.

Truthiness is the term coined by the public debater, media politician, deep thinker, true American, would-be Olympic sports star – and dare we even say scientist – Stephen Colbert for a rethorical position in which the acceptance of fact does not require the presence of evidence – but instead the feeling that something is true.

New a group of researchers from New Zealand and Canada conclude from four different truthiness experiments that people believe claims are true, regardless of whether they actually are true, when a decorative photograph appears alongside the claim.

Apparently this is the case. It is what a group of scientists of Victoria University of Wellington and the Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the University of Victoria would want us to believe. They however do not jet seem to have consulted Mr Colbert himself and their publication in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review is actually a PDF with an unreadable length of 18 pages, which are completely deprived of illustrative images – so hardly trustworthy, Colbert would feel.

Anyway, it is of course a disease.

© Rolf Schuttenhelm | www.bitsofscience.org