Be Wary of Testimonials. Often the media tries to impress us with the seriousness of some problem by presenting a vivid testimonial of an individual who suffers from it. These accounts are enormously successful in getting us to imagine what it would be like to be in similar circumstances, and they make us much more sympathetic toward those who suffer some bad fate. And well they should! By themselves, however, there is no reason they should have much influence on our sense of the prevalence of some malady.
