Please respond to a minimum of two peers. Include in your response: Discuss whether you think the information presented by your peers’ examples was used to mislead the reader? Explain your response. I

Please respond to a minimum of two peers. Include in your response: Discuss whether you think the information presented by your peers’ examples was used to mislead the reader? Explain your response. I
Joanna For this discussion, I will be referencing an article titled Cigarette Smoking Rates Down Sharply Among U.S. Young Adults. Without reading the rest of the article, the title alone makes it seem as if the number of young adults who smoke cigarettes has dropped drastically recently. After reading the article and viewing the graphs associated with the polls, it can be seen that the decline has been a steady one over 20 years. The percentage reported from 2001 to 2003 was an average of 35%, and the latest average estimate from 2019 to 2022 is 12%. The margin of error for 18-29-year-olds is 5%, meaning that the percentage could be as low as 7% and as high as 18%.  A more accurate title for the article would be Cigarette Smoking Rates Steadily Declining Among U.S. young adults. Additionally, the sample size for this poll was only 3,545 adults aged 18 and older, conducted through telephone interviews (Jones, 2022). The sample size is very small when compared to the estimated total population of adults in the U.S. over the age of 18 at 258.3 million (Ogunwole, 2022). Of the total sample, only 505 were in the young adult age group of 18 to 29. The majority of those interviewed were 30 years old and older, with the largest interviewed group being aged 65 years and older with 1,205 adults (Jones, 2022). According to Khan Academy (2022), “the smaller the sample size, the larger the margin of error”. The focus of the population in the title had the least respondents. Interviews via telephone may also misrepresent the portion of the population that smokes as not everyone has a phone, or may block or not answer unknown calls. Initially, the title of the article may lead one to think that younger adults are making better health choices, as I did. However, upon further reading of the article, it is found that while cigarette smoking may be on the decline, it is potentially being replaced with other forms of smoking, such as e-cigarettes and marijuana, particularly among younger adults. The alternatives are not considered any safer than cigarettes, with the long-term effects of vaping still unknown (Jones, 2022). The overall data from this article is relatively similar to data found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website and I was unable to find any article that refutes or indicates a major discrepancy in the reported percentages by Jones (2022). I cannot recall any specific articles that were sent to me that I believed just by the title. Typically, I will read through an entire article before making any determinations of whether it is believable or credible. I often will cross-reference with other sources as well if something seems off or questionable. I think I am more skeptical than gullible to information when first released until there is more research or data to support the claim.  
Please respond to a minimum of two peers. Include in your response: Discuss whether you think the information presented by your peers’ examples was used to mislead the reader? Explain your response. I
Mackenzie The article that I chose to discuss is posted by BBC and it touches on the fact that the brand Colgate had a specific campaign where the people in the commercial had “instantly” repaired teeth, gums, and enamel.  How did the poll or article misrepresent the facts? How might you rewrite the title of the article more accurately? I think that the article misrepresented the facts by telling the audience that if you use this toothpaste, you will see instant results, and your teeth, gums, and enamel will be recovered overnight. This might be true for some people, but this instance definitely won’t be true for all people in the population of users. I think if the article was written in a way where it said that this toothpaste has been proven in preventing the further breakdown of teeth, gums, and enamel then this might not be as misleading. I feel like many people wouldn’t understand that these results are not proven for everyone.  What was the author trying to get you to think? Why?  What could be the ramifications of believing false information? The author was trying to get the audience to think that if they used this toothpaste all their oral problems would just magically disappear. I think some of the ramifications of believing this false information is that people would waste money on a product that might not work for them, or they may use this product and it may harm them instead of the intended effect it was supposed to have.  Find and describe an article that refutes this information, if possible. I found an article where it stated that many of these bigger toothpaste companies use these “overarching” statements in order to persuade people that what they are doing currently for their oral hygiene isn’t potentially working and that if they switched these people would see night and day results. Which may or may not be true. Everyone’s hygiene routine is different, and something that might work for someone, may not work for somebody else.  Have you ever been sent articles that you believed just by reading the title? What was the result? I think that we all as humans believe what we want to believe. Personally, I have definitely fallen for rumors or articles written because it just seems too detailed to be falsified information. Where so much of what we read today is misleading or falsified. These companies use this to their advantage to get people to believe them or buy their products.