When brands involve surveys and research in their messaging, what are they actually doing, and what do they owe the consumer?
“Four out of five dentists surveyed.” Remember that commercial? I do. Every time I see a toothpaste ad, I think of that line. It doesn’t matter if I can hear the commercial or just see the action. I still think four out of five dentists surveyed. That was the gold standard when I was growing up. Four out of five dentists? That sounded like serious business. Not really. They surveyed five dentists, and that was apparently enough proof that this toothpaste was the best. But we bought it because they surveyed dentists. There it is. Proof.
We all like a little proof in our day, a small fact bump to push us over the top when we’re faced with endless grocery aisles and millions of choices. Standing in front of a shelf full of toothpaste options, maybe that little phrase, four out of five, guides you toward the right one for you and your family.
Since the 1950s, brands have used surveys and “expert” opinions to sell products. Remember the Vicks Formula 44 commercials? Peter Bergman, known for his role as Dr. Cliff Warner on All My Children and later Jack Abbott on The Young and the Restless, would look into the camera and say, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” And that was enough. Enough expertise to persuade you to buy the product. A little news for you: I’ve played a doctor on TV. No one on this planet should take medical advice from me, even if it’s about cough drops. But two actors who portrayed medical professionals were enough to lend Vicks credibility.
It goes beyond four dentists and one contrarian; there’s always one. Every day, there’s a new study in the news. Coffee was bad for you for years. Drink decaf or risk a long list of ailments. Then suddenly we’re told that two cups a day might extend our lives. Alcohol follows the same pattern. One week, any amount will shorten your life dramatically. The next two glasses of red wine will improve your memory and protect your heart. What are we supposed to believe?
And what do we do when we learn that a brand promoting one of these studies funded it? What if the four out of five dentists don’t exist? What if the people saying wine is good for you aren’t neutral scientists but vintners trying to boost sales?
When brands involve surveys and research in their messaging, what are they actually doing, and what do they owe the consumer?
Why Studies Feel Like Safety
Why does something like “four out of five dentists” work on us in the first place? It’s easy to laugh at it now, but in the moment, it feels reassuring. Numbers feel solid. Percentages feel objective. A statistic sounds like someone did the homework, so we don’t have to.
Modern life is an endless sequence of decisions. Which toothpaste. Which cereal. Which supplement. Which article to believe? Which diet to try? Every aisle is a referendum. Every headline is a warning. When you’re faced with that much noise, you’re not looking for perfect truth. You’re looking for relief. A study offers relief. It compresses complexity into something manageable. Four out of five. Eighty percent. Clinically proven. The world shrinks down to something measurable.
There’s also the comfort of borrowed authority. Most of us are not chemists, epidemiologists, or dentists. We don’t have the time or training to evaluate fluoride concentrations or parse statistical models. So we outsource. We lean on signals. White coats. Graphs. The phrase “peer reviewed.” We assume someone serious has already asked the hard questions. Believing the study is not laziness. It’s a survival mechanism in a culture saturated with claims.
The problem is that the language of science carries weight even when the science itself is thin. A tiny survey can sound monumental if it’s phrased correctly. A funded trial can feel neutral if the funding isn’t mentioned. A percentage can obscure the fact that the sample size was laughably small, four out of five, for example. The structure of the sentence does the heavy lifting. Four out of five sounds decisive. Five total respondents sounds fragile. Both statements can describe the same thing.
We aren’t fools for responding to research. We are wired to trust consensus. From an evolutionary standpoint, following the group kept you alive. If most of the tribe avoided the berries, you avoided the berries. If most of the tribe moved away from the river, you moved too. Consensus signals safety. When a brand presents a study, it’s tapping into that instinct. It’s saying, the tribe has spoken.
But consensus can be manufactured. Authority can be staged. And numbers can be dressed up in ways that feel far more substantial than they are.
That’s where the ethical question begins to sharpen. If brands know that we respond to these signals, if they know that numbers calm us and experts reassure us, what responsibility do they carry when they use them? Is it enough to imply research, or do they owe us the full picture?
When True Isn’t the Same as Honest
Most brands aren’t inventing studies out of thin air. The four dentists may have existed. The survey may have happened. The percentage may be mathematically accurate. The problem isn’t always fabrication. It’s framing.
There’s a wide and comfortable gap between something being technically true and something being meaningfully honest. A toothpaste company can legitimately survey five dentists and report that four preferred its product. That statement is factually correct. What it doesn’t say is how those dentists were selected, whether they were paid, how the question was phrased, or whether five opinions constitute anything close to scientific rigor. The truth is present. The context is missing.
This is where marketing becomes theater. Not because it lies outright, but because it understands how language shapes perception. “Four out of five dentists” sounds like a consensus. It sounds like a panel. It sounds like an institutional agreement. It doesn’t sound like a handful of responses gathered for promotional purposes. The sentence does just enough work to imply authority without committing to it.
The same thing happens with studies we see in headlines. “Research shows.” “Scientists say.” “Clinically proven.” Those phrases carry enormous weight, but they rarely travel with methodology attached. Was the study peer reviewed? How large was the sample? Who funded it? Was it replicated? Most advertisements don’t have room for that nuance, and most consumers don’t have time to chase footnotes. The grey area lives right there. The information is not false. It’s incomplete.
Brands understand this. They understand that numbers calm people. They understand that expert language lowers resistance. They also understand that the average buyer is unlikely to request raw data before choosing cough syrup or cereal. So they operate in that narrow corridor where they can claim research without fully exposing it.
And here’s the uncomfortable part: legally, they’re often fine. Ethically, the question is less settled.
At what point does implying credibility become exploiting trust? When does selective transparency cross the line from persuasion into manipulation? If a brand knows that a statistic will be interpreted as more robust than it actually is, is it enough to say, technically, we never lied?
This is where the conversation stops being about gullible consumers and starts being about responsibility. Because once you understand how easily authority can be staged, you can’t pretend it’s neutral.
What Transparency Actually Looks Like
If the problem isn’t always lying but selective disclosure, then the solution isn’t dramatic. It’s clarity.
Real research doesn’t hide its scaffolding. It explains how the study was conducted, discloses who funded it, defines its sample size, and names its limitations. It acknowledges what the data does not prove. Scientific integrity depends on that humility. A credible study is as careful about its boundaries as it is about its conclusions.
Marketing language rarely carries that humility. It prefers certainty, clean lines, and outcomes that fit neatly into taglines. “Clinically proven” sounds better than “In a limited, single-phase study with a modest sample size.” But those details matter. They change how we interpret the claim.
Transparency doesn’t require a brand to publish a doctoral dissertation on the back of a toothpaste box. It does require that if research is used as persuasion, it be accessible. If you reference a study, make it easy to find. If experts are cited, name them. If a survey was conducted, disclose how many people were surveyed and under what conditions. None of that weakens the claim. It strengthens trust.
There’s also a difference between independent research and research commissioned to validate a preexisting position. Funding does not automatically invalidate findings. But hiding funding relationships erodes credibility. Consumers may not examine the methodology, but they can sense when something feels staged. Trust frays slowly, often invisibly, but once it tears, it’s hard to mend.
Ethical brands understand that long-term trust is worth more than short-term persuasion. They resist the temptation to let implication do all the work. They recognize that authority is not a prop. It is something earned and maintained through consistency and openness.
In other words, transparency is not about overloading consumers with data. It is about refusing to rely on ambiguity.
When Trust Starts to Thin
The danger of operating in the grey area isn’t that one toothpaste sells a few extra tubes. It’s that over time, people stop believing anything at all.
When every product is “clinically proven,” when every snack is “research-backed,” when every headline announces a new breakthrough that quietly contradicts last month’s breakthrough, something subtle begins to happen. Consumers adapt. They grow skeptical. The phrases lose weight. Authority becomes background noise.
This erosion doesn’t happen in a dramatic moment. It happens slowly. A small doubt here. A headline that feels exaggerated there. A study funded by the very company promoting it. Eventually, the words that once reassured begin to feel like part of the sales script.
And when that happens, even legitimate research suffers. Real scientists who publish careful, peer-reviewed work find themselves lumped into the same mental category as promotional surveys. A well-designed study can be dismissed because it sounds too much like an advertisement. The marketplace becomes crowded with claims, and the average person no longer has a reliable way to distinguish substance from spin.
The cost isn’t just commercial. It’s cultural. Public trust in institutions has already been thinning for years. When brands casually borrow the language of science without carrying its discipline, they contribute to that thinning. They teach consumers that authority is flexible, that numbers can be shaped, that expertise is a costume anyone can put on.
At some point, people stop asking whether a claim is true. They ask whether it’s useful to believe it. That’s a dangerous shift. Belief becomes transactional. Trust becomes conditional. Cynicism becomes rational.
No brand sets out to erode public trust. But each time research is used as a decorative flourish rather than a serious commitment, the foundation weakens a little more.
Which brings us back to responsibility. If consumers are already navigating a noisy, contradictory landscape, brands have a choice. They can add to the confusion, or they can become one of the rare voices that handles evidence carefully.
The question isn’t whether persuasion is allowed. Of course it is. The question is whether persuasion built on research carries an obligation beyond clever phrasing.
What Ethical Brands Owe Us
If a brand chooses to use research as part of its persuasion, it takes on more than a marketing advantage. It takes on a responsibility.
At the very least, it owes us transparency. Not buried disclaimers in six-point type, not vague references to “studies show,” but accessible, traceable information. If you cite research, make it findable. If you quote experts, name them. If a survey informed your claim, say how many people participated and how it was conducted. Let the strength of the research determine the strength of the claim.
It also owes us proportionality. A small study should not be presented as a sweeping consensus. Preliminary findings should not be dressed up as settled science. Ethical persuasion matches its confidence to the actual weight of the evidence. If the data is limited, say so. If the findings are promising but not definitive, resist the urge to overstate them.
There is also the matter of funding. Research funded by a company is not automatically invalid, but it is not neutral either. Consumers deserve to know when a brand has a financial stake in the outcome. Disclosure is not weakness. It is context. Context allows people to make informed decisions rather than rely on implication.
And perhaps most importantly, ethical brands owe us restraint. Just because a statistic can be framed in a compelling way does not mean it should be stretched to its rhetorical limits. Trust is cumulative. It builds when a company chooses clarity over cleverness, even when cleverness would convert faster.
None of this requires brands to become academic institutions. It requires them to recognize that research language carries weight. When they borrow that language, they are borrowing trust that was earned elsewhere, often by scientists, physicians, and institutions that operate under strict standards. To use that language casually is to spend credibility that does not fully belong to them.
Consumers will always look for signals. We will always appreciate reassurance in a crowded marketplace. The obligation is not to eliminate persuasion. It is to practice it with discipline.
The Takeaway
Trust does not disappear in a scandal. It thins out quietly. A statistic that sounds larger than it is. A study referenced but never shown. An expert quoted without context. None of it feels catastrophic in isolation. Over time, it accumulates.
We are not foolish for responding to research. We are busy. We are surrounded by choice. When we hear “clinically proven” or “studies show,” we relax a little. We assume someone did the work. That assumption is fragile. It only holds as long as the signal matches the substance behind it.
Four out of five dentists may have been real. The survey may have happened. The percentage may have been accurate. But if the framing suggests a level of rigor that wasn’t there, something subtle is spent. Not just credibility for one brand, but confidence in the language itself. When every claim leans on implied authority, authority stops meaning much at all.
That is the cost of operating in the grey space between technically true and meaningfully honest. It trains people to doubt even the things that deserve belief. It turns research into decoration. It makes trust transactional.
At ThoughtLab, we believe brands are capable of more than that. If you choose to use research, you carry its weight. You match the strength of your claims to the strength of your evidence. You make context accessible. You resist the urge to let implication do what transparency should. Not because regulations demand it, but because long-term trust is worth protecting.
The marketplace is loud enough. Credibility does not need more performance. It needs discipline.
And once that discipline slips, it is much harder to rebuild than it was to borrow in the first place.
