I met a guy in college who swore by the Playboy method of pouring a glass of beer. You can view the instructions here. (Note: NSFW) These instructions has turned the simple act of pouring a beer into a scientific process with specific rules. The beer should be served at 43-46 °F, the bottle (but not the glass) should be tilted at a 40° downward angle, and there should be three pours, no more or less.

So beer tastes better when you use a certain pour count and make sure you don't tip the glass at all? Apparently...according to some people. I'd be willing to stake money on the fact that, given a double-blind taste test, these same people would have a difficult time telling the difference.

There's a certain world view held by lots of people that would have you believe that human beings are little fact-processing machines. They go further to claim that when a person believes something counter to evidence, it's attributable to a lack of intelligence. This fact machine is out of order...he's dumb!

I don't think it's right to manipulate people through the use of misinformation, but the gentle art of persuasion has little to do with spewing facts at someone until they submit to your point of view. The beer story doesn't work because it uses facts that are scientifically proven; they work because they play to the vision most men have of themselves as debonair sophistos.

So if you need to make an impact and change the way people think: cater to the superego instead of listing statistics.