Posted: Mar 05, 2012 8:44 pm
It never fails to surprise me just how difficult it is for people to realize that sometimes things appear to work because random chance generates enough successes to justify it. When you couple that with the low risk involved (and scams like homeopathy ALWAYS have practically nonexistent risk), you get a situation where hundreds of people jump up and down in order to try and make it rain, or travel far and wide to meet a person who claims to be able to communicate with their dead relative, or buy a lottery ticket, or treat their ailments with energy-imprinted sugar pills.