Skeptic’s folly

Skeptic’s folly

I had a head cold the other day, so I left work early and went to the grocery store for a Vitamin C supplement to boost my immune system.

In the nutrition aisle, I was overwhelmed by options. There were considerably more varieties and volumes of vitamin C than nature intended. Generic. Brand-name. 500 mg. 1,000 mg. A bottle containing 350 500-mg caplets (“50 free caplets!”) was buy-one-get-one-free. Another bottle containing 133 1,000-mg caplets (“33 free caplets!”) was buy-one-get-one-free, too, for about twice the price. I saw this as a word problem and used my phone’s text editor to keep track of the algebra.*

I spent something like five or ten minutes standing in the aisle, feeling miserable, doing math, trying to decide which was cheaper. The winner’s margin was one hundredth of a penny. Ignoring this, I picked up the bottle with the lowest total price.

Then I started noticing asterisks. “This product has not been tested by the Food and Drug Administration, and is not designed to treat, cure, or prevent any illness.”

So I put it down and bought candy instead.

When I wrote this, I was halfway through the bag of Swedish Fish, and was feeling better already.

*Do not attempt the word problem. I reconstructed the numbers from an already hazy memory.