Loud is not the same as proven

In a barber's shop in Manama, the man in the chair is repeating something he heard on a clip that morning. A well-known voice, with a very large following, has announced that a food almost everyone eats is quietly poisoning the country.

The barber nods. The man waiting nods. Nobody asks how anyone would know that.

There is an old and sensible rule for this. Small, ordinary claims need small, ordinary support. If someone tells me that people who sleep more are less irritable, I do not need a laboratory to believe it. A claim that overturns what every doctor and every grandmother has said for a century is different. That one needs a mountain of careful evidence, checked by people who had every reason to find it wrong.

Lately two things are being offered in place of the mountain.

The first is fame. The speaker has millions of followers, so the claim borrows their weight. The second is heat. The claim arrives with such certainty and anger that doubting it feels like taking the side of whoever he is angry at.

Neither is evidence. A large audience proves that a person is good at holding attention, which is a real talent and a different one. Fury proves that the speaker feels strongly, which nobody doubted.

The same holds for anyone selling something. A sweeping promise about what a product will do for your skin, your sleep or your savings is not made truer by the size of the account making it.

The bigger the claim, the more proof it owes. Being famous, or furious, does not settle that bill.