Quotes from Darrell Huff

As Henry G. Felsen, a humorist and no medical authority, pointed out quite a while ago, proper treatment will cure a cold in seven days, but left to itself a cold will hang on for a week.

Whether they were naughty or not did not come within what Dr. Kinsey considered to be his province. So he ran up against something that has plagued many another observer: It is dangerous to mention any subject having high emotional content without hastily saying where you are for or agin

Many a great, if fleeting, medical discovery has been launched similarly. "Make haste," as one physician put it, "to use a new remedy before it is too late." The guilt does not always lie with the medical profession alone. Public pressure and hasty journalism often launch a treatment that is unproved, particularly when the demand is great and the statistical background hazy. So

Given time, a cold will cure itself.

Now the mental test of any variety is one of the prime voodoo fetishes of our time, so you may have to argue a little to find out the results of the tests;

You have pretty fair evidence to go on if you suspect that polls in general are biased in one specific direction, the direction of the Literary Digest error. This bias is toward the person with more money, more education, more information and alertness, better appearance, more conventional behavior, and more settled habits than the average of the population he is chosen to represent.

Now $12 on the $100 for money to be paid back regularly over half a year works out to something like forty-eight per cent real interest.

Don't be a novelist --- be a statistician. Much more scope for the imagination.

It is dangerous to mention any subject having high emotional content without hastily saying where you are for or agin it.