4 Out Of 5 Dentists

I forget exactly what those 80 percent of dentists were in favor of, nor did they say what the other guy did not like about the product under discussion. But four out of five recommended it. Maybe the fifth was a doofus, or perhaps the other four figured it was just as good as anything else, so why not?

Then, again, maybe the original sample was four out of a hundred and it was just too embarrassing to put in the ads. So they overlooked a whole lot of naysayers and left one in just for window-dressing.

“Four out of a hundred dentists recommend this product. The other ninety-six think it’s somewhere between useless and worse than rat poison.”

Worse, maybe there are only four dentists in the entire country who recommend the product. One is strung out, two are drunks, and the other is in the slammer for doing underage.

But I digress.

So what if 4/5 recommend something? That may be a good indicator, but you might also find that four out of five teens have had sex before marriage. Majority of numbers do not always represent ideal paths. Maybe it’s not how many people with titles tell us to do something, but how well we consider their words, ask around, add our own knowledge and make up our own minds.