10 Honest Footnotes You’ll Never See
The most common phrase used by people (presenters, bloggers, the guy on the next barstool, etc.) who want to establish their credibility is “studies show”, followed closely by “it’s been scientifically proven that…” (In case you want to know where I got that statistic, see footnote #10)
On rare occasions, they actually show us the studies, or provide a useful reference in the footnotes, but they usually leave off the original source, because this is what their footnotes would look like if they were being completely honest:
¹Another blogger said it
²I asked three of my friends, and two agreed with me
³Got this one from a marketing white paper
?Doesn’t prove anything, but these colored pictures of a brain make it look official
?Malcolm Gladwell said it, so it must be true
?From the internet
?My 7th grade science teacher told me—I think
?Based on a minor study from 50 years ago and blown wildly out of proportion
?Since been proven wrong in a dozen other studies that no one has read
¹?I pulled this one right out of my ____
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