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3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2021–2023
1:01 · 2.6M views · Nov 11, 2006
A one-minute 1949 television commercial for Camel cigarettes claiming that more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.
HN cites it as a historical example of corporations using doctors and misleading advertising, drawing analogies to modern industries.
3 comments from Hacker News
Easy to look back and make fun of those commercials [0]. It's more sad than anything else if someone does that since they'd be applying their current knowledge of harms of tobacco to people who didn't have said knowledge. This is a cognitive bias called the Curse of knowledge [1]. I see so much of this happening not just on Youtube comments, but even here on HN, it's almost disturbing. The fair thing to wonder about is what things are we doing today that will seem ridiculous and obviously harmful to people in 100 years from now. Staring at a bright flat screen hours a day just to interact with a random stranger who vehemently disagrees with you about petty subjects? [0] this video [1] [LINK]
> You can find misinformation of all levels of sophistication, all the way to incorrect scientific papers if thats your shtick. This isn't new at all. "More doctors smoke Camel Cigarettes". this video And the Tobacco industry funded all types of scientific papers, that were published all over the place to demonstrate Tobacco's "health benefits". ------- The only reason we can't find examples older than maybe the mid 1900s or so, was because doctors weren't even trusted until the 1900s. 1800s doctors were well recognized as quacks and had very little reputation among the American people. So there was no reason to use doctors as a propaganda point back then.
And what about their kids that didn’t choose to get asthma? And what about the adults who wouldn’t have chosen a gas stove if they had balanced and factual information rather than information tainted by corporate influence? this video