[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Hysteria often drives policy. We have thousands of ignorant but vocal peoplewhose pronouncements receive publicity from a Media that thrives on creating and maintaining controversy.

However, the hysteria is often a result of a legitimate distrust of government officials, the officials lie at the drop of a hat and this leaves people uncertain of their leadership which in turn creates superstition and conspiracy theories.

[hinckley buzzard]

Yeah. Maybe. But this particular hysteria was fuelled by the paranoid fringe reacting to a discredited quack who has since lost his license.

Nothing to do with gubmint.

[Rudder]

Hysteria often drives policy. We have thousands of ignorant but vocal people whose pronouncements receive publicity from a Media that thrives on creating and maintaining controversy.

An excellent case-in-point is the story of "subliminal advertising." Subliminal (subthreshold) perception, by definition, doesn't work (the stimulus is below perceptable threshold). Dr. Robert A. McCleary's work with this topic has yielded some interesting phenomena, but subliminal perception doesn't exist.

Yet laws abound outlawing subliminal advertisement and they were issued before any scientific studies of the alleged phenomenon had been done.