Why do we always seem to trust expert opinion? The Fall and Rise of Febreze
I honestly don't believe people really understand or believe in experimentation. It seems so easy to just trust an "expert" and to believe an initial experiment that confirms your intuition or design. Striving to try to prove yourself wrong rather than right is the only want to understand your experiement.
A great example of this I love is the story of Febreze. A massive brand that has all but completely cornered the market almost completely failed. Febreze did plenty of experiments to show that their initial product removed scents. It worked for people who sat in smoking sections, it worked to remove the scent of pets. They saw successful result that confirmed their belief that people felt a need to remove those scents around them with a park ranger who often ended up bring home the scent of a skunk. For her this changed her life.
But the product wasn't selling and they couldn't understand. On the brink of complete failure they attended the home of someone owning several cats, the house smelling absolutely of the pets that lived there. when asked why she stopped using Febreze she responded that she didn't really see a change, its not like her home smelled any different.
Thinking people needed to make "sanitize" the smell of their home was confirmed in some experiments, but that wasn't reality. After pivoting and recovering Febreze identified that people wanted a pleasant scent after they finished cleaning as an olfactory reward for the hard work they put in. This is how Febreze as we know it today was born.
If your experiment confirms the experts belief, it still doesn't make it true.










