The world around us is going through a notorious concept called “Zohnerism”. Zohnerism — is all about twisting of simple facts to confuse people!
It’s pretty interesting to read the text below to understand what it is :
In 1997, 14 year old Nathan Zohner presented his science fair project to his classmates, seeking to ban a highly toxic chemical from its everyday use.
The chemical in question? Dihydrogen monoxide.
Throughout his presentation, Zohner provided his audience scientifically correct evidence as to why this chemical should be banned.
He explained that dihydrogen monoxide:
- Causes severe burns while it’s in gas form.
- Corrodes and rusts metal.
- Kills countless amounts of people annually.
- Is commonly found in tumours, acid rain etc.
- Causes excessive urination and bloating if consumed.
- Zohner also said that the chemical is able to kill you if you depend on it and then experience an extended withdrawal.
He then asked his classmates if they actually wanted to ban dihydrogen monoxide.
And so, 43 out of the 50 children present voted to ban this clearly toxic chemical.
However… this chemical isn’t typically considered toxic at all.
In fact, dihydrogen monoxide is simply H2O, which is nothing but water.
Nathan Zohner’s experiment wasn’t a legitimate attempt to ban water, but instead an experiment to get a representation of how gullible people can really be.
Also, all of the points that Zohner used to convey his point were 100% factually correct; he just skewed all of the information in his favour by omitting certain facts.
In recognition of his experiment, journalist James K. Glassman coined the term “Zohnerism” to refer to “the use of a true fact to lead a scientifically and mathematically ignorant public to a false conclusion”.
And this occurs a lot more often than you think, especially when politicians, conspiracy theorists, individuals etc., use proven facts to persuade people into believing false claims.
The fact that people can mislead, and be misled so easily, is highly unsettling. In 2020, all of us experienced first-hand the potential danger of letting anyone say anything without any facts to back it up.
Zohnerism is happening everywhere, it’s being followed by social media, news channels, business men, individuals etc.
Some of the recent examples will make you understand what I am talking about…
- Rajdeep Sardesai from India Today for misleading the public by provoking a riot on Republic Day.
- Showcase of politics in Tandav, a series on Prime Video
- Farmers protest, no one has clue what’s happening
- GameStop…Robinhood, you all know the story so far
- Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide case, all the hallaboo didn’t lead to anywhere
This has become a normal phenomenon, we have so much of data and an opportunity to put things across the audience. The problem is no one knows what is relevant and how much of what we are seeing is real or made up.
When we started Spalba, we kept event industry in mind and we decided to take a high ground. We saw so much of potential in changing the way events are planned and executed all across the world.
Event management, as an industry is not recognised and we have been laggards in adopting the technology into our daily eventful lives. While data and data science is changing the way world is functioning, data in our industry is limited to personal computers/laptops in so many event organisations/individuals. The output of one’s successful event is never used as an input for another’s event, thus missing an opportunity of an overall industry growth.
On the other side if you look at the potential of this event planning industry, its huge. According to a study by Ernst and Young Marketer Survey 2019, “The experience economy is the new reality and 69% of the marketers will increase their spends on events and activations in their marketing budgets.”
In another report by Allied Market Research, “Global Event and Experiences Industry is expected to reach USD 2.3 Trillion by 2026 at a CAGR of 10.3%, currently its valued at around USD 1.1 Trillion.”
That’s a huge jump, right ? but the way it is and the way it is going, it’s not going to reach that target of USD 2.3 Trillion, so how is it going to happen. Its only going to happen if we infuse the right amount of technology, keeping the essence of the industry as human centric, bringing people together
At Spalba, we are trying to infuse the right kind of technology, what we are actually trying to do is democratise the data and help event planners in arriving at the decision early so that the time can be saved and hence money invested on projects is reduced and optimised.
Our vision is to “Organise global data on events and experiences, make it accessible, functional and experiential for event planners”, thus reducing the white noise and giving you something that will help you in planning and executing events better, ultimately delivering better return on investments.
We know it’s a long journey going forward and it’s an uphill task, but someone need to start and then we are sure, all will follow.
So let’s not behave like kids from Zohner’s class and believe in whatever we see and hear, let’s base our action on relevant data, analyse it and then express our views and comments.
If you are interested in being a part of our journey, please write to me at [email protected], let’s bring some method to this madness.
Spalba is a SaaS platform that makes events and experiences simple, efficient and data driven for enterprises.
Spalba is a SaaS platform that makes events and experiences simple, efficient and data driven for enterprises.