Poor United Airlines! They are in the midst of a public relations debacle, one so profound that even a White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gaffe cannot distract from it. In United’s effort to provide great service to its passengers scheduled for a flight out of Louisville, KY, in early April they felt the need to get 4 crew members from Chicago to Louisville for the flight. To do this, the airline removed 4 passengers off a full United flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville (in retrospect, perhaps United could have called for an Uber to take the crew to Louisville by car, but that would be a different editorial, one on 20/20 hindsight). One of the passengers did not accept being bumped willingly and, as captured on video, was violently removed from the flight.
United’s stock took a tumble in more ways than one. Suddenly United became the butt of jokes and memes, of fake commercials, of TV talk shows, and of editorials. It is hard to avoid the United bashing. United’s corporate value dropped, albeit temporarily, by nearly $1 billion.1
Was this incident in any way representative of United Airlines? United carried 143 million2 of the 719 million passengers on US domestic flights in 2016.3 More people are struck by lightning twice than are subject to violent removal from a United flight. There’s tons of data that support the high quality of service United provides, including a second lowest flight cancellation rate (just behind Hawaiian Airlines), according to January 2017 data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.4
But none of that matters. Humans are swayed more by a single anecdote than by a pile of data. A juicy, graphic anecdote—like the body of the bloodied doctor being dragged off the plane—grabs people’s attention, even if that event was totally unrepresentative of the norm, even if that event is no more likely to happen at United than at any other airline.
We face a similar phenomenon in dermatology when patients are unwilling to consider a treatment, because they heard about one friend or relative who had a problem with that particular treatment. It is unlikely that any amount of data, patient education, or argument will sway the thinking of such a patient. Just move on and offer something else.
On the other hand, with patients who are uncertain about treatment, we can use the phenomenon to our advantage by describing a single experience we had in which a medication worked phenomenally well for a patient, painting that picture in the most graphic (and HIPAA-compliant) way possible. Human psychological characteristics can work both for and against us.
Steven R. Feldman, MD, PhD
Chief Medical Editor
Dr Feldman is with the Center for Dermatology Research and the Departments of Dermatology, Pathology, and Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC.
References
1. Shell A. United Airlines stock loses altitude, sheds $25 million in value. USA Today. April 11, 2017. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2017/04/11/united-stock-falls/100325694/. Accessed April 28, 2017.
2. United corporate fact sheet. United Airlines Inc website. https://newsroom.united.com/corporate-fact-sheet. Accessed April 28, 2017.
3. Corrected 2016 traffic data for U.S airlines and foreign airlines U.S. flights [news release]. Washington, DC: Bureau of Transportation Statistics; March 27, 2017. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts017_17. Accessed April 28, 2017.
4. January 2017 airline on-time arrival rate down from January 2016, up from December 2016 [press release]. Washington, DC: Bureau of Transportation Statistics; March 14, 2017. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/dot026_17. Accessed April 28, 2017.
Poor United Airlines! They are in the midst of a public relations debacle, one so profound that even a White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gaffe cannot distract from it. In United’s effort to provide great service to its passengers scheduled for a flight out of Louisville, KY, in early April they felt the need to get 4 crew members from Chicago to Louisville for the flight. To do this, the airline removed 4 passengers off a full United flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville (in retrospect, perhaps United could have called for an Uber to take the crew to Louisville by car, but that would be a different editorial, one on 20/20 hindsight). One of the passengers did not accept being bumped willingly and, as captured on video, was violently removed from the flight.
United’s stock took a tumble in more ways than one. Suddenly United became the butt of jokes and memes, of fake commercials, of TV talk shows, and of editorials. It is hard to avoid the United bashing. United’s corporate value dropped, albeit temporarily, by nearly $1 billion.1
Was this incident in any way representative of United Airlines? United carried 143 million2 of the 719 million passengers on US domestic flights in 2016.3 More people are struck by lightning twice than are subject to violent removal from a United flight. There’s tons of data that support the high quality of service United provides, including a second lowest flight cancellation rate (just behind Hawaiian Airlines), according to January 2017 data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.4
But none of that matters. Humans are swayed more by a single anecdote than by a pile of data. A juicy, graphic anecdote—like the body of the bloodied doctor being dragged off the plane—grabs people’s attention, even if that event was totally unrepresentative of the norm, even if that event is no more likely to happen at United than at any other airline.
We face a similar phenomenon in dermatology when patients are unwilling to consider a treatment, because they heard about one friend or relative who had a problem with that particular treatment. It is unlikely that any amount of data, patient education, or argument will sway the thinking of such a patient. Just move on and offer something else.
On the other hand, with patients who are uncertain about treatment, we can use the phenomenon to our advantage by describing a single experience we had in which a medication worked phenomenally well for a patient, painting that picture in the most graphic (and HIPAA-compliant) way possible. Human psychological characteristics can work both for and against us.
Steven R. Feldman, MD, PhD
Chief Medical Editor
Dr Feldman is with the Center for Dermatology Research and the Departments of Dermatology, Pathology, and Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC.
References
1. Shell A. United Airlines stock loses altitude, sheds $25 million in value. USA Today. April 11, 2017. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2017/04/11/united-stock-falls/100325694/. Accessed April 28, 2017.
2. United corporate fact sheet. United Airlines Inc website. https://newsroom.united.com/corporate-fact-sheet. Accessed April 28, 2017.
3. Corrected 2016 traffic data for U.S airlines and foreign airlines U.S. flights [news release]. Washington, DC: Bureau of Transportation Statistics; March 27, 2017. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts017_17. Accessed April 28, 2017.
4. January 2017 airline on-time arrival rate down from January 2016, up from December 2016 [press release]. Washington, DC: Bureau of Transportation Statistics; March 14, 2017. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/dot026_17. Accessed April 28, 2017.
Poor United Airlines! They are in the midst of a public relations debacle, one so profound that even a White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gaffe cannot distract from it. In United’s effort to provide great service to its passengers scheduled for a flight out of Louisville, KY, in early April they felt the need to get 4 crew members from Chicago to Louisville for the flight. To do this, the airline removed 4 passengers off a full United flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville (in retrospect, perhaps United could have called for an Uber to take the crew to Louisville by car, but that would be a different editorial, one on 20/20 hindsight). One of the passengers did not accept being bumped willingly and, as captured on video, was violently removed from the flight.
United’s stock took a tumble in more ways than one. Suddenly United became the butt of jokes and memes, of fake commercials, of TV talk shows, and of editorials. It is hard to avoid the United bashing. United’s corporate value dropped, albeit temporarily, by nearly $1 billion.1
Was this incident in any way representative of United Airlines? United carried 143 million2 of the 719 million passengers on US domestic flights in 2016.3 More people are struck by lightning twice than are subject to violent removal from a United flight. There’s tons of data that support the high quality of service United provides, including a second lowest flight cancellation rate (just behind Hawaiian Airlines), according to January 2017 data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.4
But none of that matters. Humans are swayed more by a single anecdote than by a pile of data. A juicy, graphic anecdote—like the body of the bloodied doctor being dragged off the plane—grabs people’s attention, even if that event was totally unrepresentative of the norm, even if that event is no more likely to happen at United than at any other airline.
We face a similar phenomenon in dermatology when patients are unwilling to consider a treatment, because they heard about one friend or relative who had a problem with that particular treatment. It is unlikely that any amount of data, patient education, or argument will sway the thinking of such a patient. Just move on and offer something else.
On the other hand, with patients who are uncertain about treatment, we can use the phenomenon to our advantage by describing a single experience we had in which a medication worked phenomenally well for a patient, painting that picture in the most graphic (and HIPAA-compliant) way possible. Human psychological characteristics can work both for and against us.
Steven R. Feldman, MD, PhD
Chief Medical Editor
Dr Feldman is with the Center for Dermatology Research and the Departments of Dermatology, Pathology, and Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC.
References
1. Shell A. United Airlines stock loses altitude, sheds $25 million in value. USA Today. April 11, 2017. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2017/04/11/united-stock-falls/100325694/. Accessed April 28, 2017.
2. United corporate fact sheet. United Airlines Inc website. https://newsroom.united.com/corporate-fact-sheet. Accessed April 28, 2017.
3. Corrected 2016 traffic data for U.S airlines and foreign airlines U.S. flights [news release]. Washington, DC: Bureau of Transportation Statistics; March 27, 2017. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts017_17. Accessed April 28, 2017.
4. January 2017 airline on-time arrival rate down from January 2016, up from December 2016 [press release]. Washington, DC: Bureau of Transportation Statistics; March 14, 2017. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/dot026_17. Accessed April 28, 2017.
