The video starts out with the sub-titles “This amazing cure for cancer has been known since the 1800s…” Appealing pictures and music. It has facts and dates about a doctor who allegedly found a cure for cancer in moss that grew in his hometown. It claims the moss cure is being held from the public by big pharmaceutical companies. The video includes what appears to be historical photographs of a guy who looks like a scientist or doctor.
At the end of the video, we learn it’s all a sham. There was no doctor by that name. There is no moss cure for cancer. Facts about cancer that are shared in the video are all wrong in the science timeline . The filmmaker reveals at the end of the video that the historical pictures of that “doctor” he used throughout the film are not even of the same guy. Sure enough, when put next to each other, it’s really obvious.
I have to admit, when I watched the video, I didn’t even notice. I was so taken with the idea of a natural cure for cancer that I didn’t see what was right in front of me.
The point of the video is that we shouldn’t believe everything we see or hear. We need to ask more questions. We shouldn’t believe everything on the internet just because that information may be packaged in a high gloss, official-looking video.
The video, which has been shared on Facebook more than 2 million times, provides an excellent exercise in how easily we can be manipulated and the ease with which inaccurate, false or even intentionally incorrect information can be shared.
It also provides a glimpse into how we sometime miss what is right in front of us.
It’s called the invisible gorilla syndrome. In 1999, researchers Simon and Chabris, conducted a study to examine what they called inattentional blindness. They showed people a video of people passing a basketball back and forth. Subjects in the study were asked to count the number of times the ball was passed between the team wearing white shirts. At one point in the video, a person dressed in a gorilla suit walks through the people tossing the basketball. When asked, a surprising number of people reported that they didn’t even see the gorilla because they were so focused on the basketball.
If you watch the video now that you have had the gorilla pointed out to you, it’s very likely you will see the gorilla walk through and even pound his or her chest while standing right in the middle of the basketball toss.
The original researchers, as well as dozens since, have used the study to suggest that humans only see what we are looking for and not necessarily everything within our view. The argument is that, based on a variety of factors such as our history and our personal agendas, we essentially highlight those things within our “eyesight” and are blind to all the rest.
I liken it to watching a movie with my husband. I sit blissfully ignorant while he points out editing snags. “She had a full bowl of ice cream in the last scene and now its almost gone” and “You can see the actor’s kneepads under his suit.” I don’t see those things because I’m not looking for them.
It makes sense then that people seeing the same thing (or reporting on the same political issue) will highlight or only see certain things. It underscores how difficult it is for any of us to be truly impartial or unbiased. Social scientists who study what some call “obviousness” suggest that not only are most of us blind to what we don’t see, we are blind to being blind as well.
We are seeing this on both extremes of the political divide in our country. The extremists on both the right and the left only see what they want to see and can’t “see” anything that the other side has to offer. Not only is the gorilla invisible, people will deny its existence sometimes even after someone points it out.
Perhaps acknowledging that we may not see everything there is to see, we can start the process of “seeing” beyond our own line of sight.
What if we each agreed to try to “see” beyond our initial snapshot? What if we tried to expand our observations to take in more – not less? Will acknowledging that our vision is sometimes clouded help all of us to see better?
A video about a made-up cure for cancer with fake pictures of a non-existent doctor. We don’t see what we aren’t looking for. If we open our eyes and look for the invisible gorilla, we may see what others see as well.
