The second kind of evidence available to us is anecdotal evidence, storytelling.

And in the spirit of this part, let me tell you a quick story.

In 2014, in one of the teaching hospitals in Pennsylvania,

Dr. Zachary Meisel was attending a patient who twisted his

ankle while playing Frisbee at the workplace picnic.

Now the patient demanded to have his ankle x-rayed,

but x-rays are costly and often unnecessary and mildly dangerous.

So Dr. Zachary Meisel went and

downloaded something called the Ottawa Ankle Rules rules,

which is a validated and very sensitive clinical decision-making

tool which can rule out a fracture with nearly 100% certainty.

He examined the ankle and checked it through the ankles,

and he was 100% certain that there was no fracture.

And therefore, no need for the x-ray.

And you know what the patient said who was by the way,

a scientist from a nearby university.

He said, well, you know what?

My brother hurt his ankle last year and

I'm very sure that he was exactly like this, and he ended up needing surgery.

So, let's do the c-ray and this was the end of the argument.

Dr. Zachary Meisel wasn't able to convince his

scientific colleague that x-ray was unnecessary,

because that person's experience was the ultimate evidence for

him and this is precisely the reason why stories work.

Because they provide a glimpse of a tunnel into other people's reality,

into other people's experience.

Quite unlike statistics or causal connections, stories are life.

They seem real.

Therefore, they might be persuasive in certain context.

I've recently seen a very interesting study about people teaching physics

to undergraduate students and there were three groups.

To the first group, they told stories about physicists who struggled

intellectually, who made mistakes and then had to come back to reconsider.

And the second group was told stories about physicists,

famous physicists like Niels Bohr or

Albert Einstein who struggled in their personal life.

Because their father didn't support them or there was poverty in their family and

the third group was just taught a regular course in physics where

Albert Einstein made great discovery without any struggle.

And the result was well, exciting as far as I'm concerned.

Exposing students to scientific struggles improved their science

class performance in terms of class grades while exposing

students to achievement stories did not and you know why?

Because achievement stories are not stories.

There is no story without a struggle.

So, stories do work.

Stories work as a motivator.

There a number of great books on storytelling.

These two my favorite, but they are not about convincing stories.

They are about stories that spread,

which is not the same thing and had a look All Marketers are Liars.

And deservedly so, it is a huge issue with accuracy in

storytelling we should be able to verify that really happened.

I once head a presentation which started with story of

American astronauts who needed something to write in space,

because regular ballpoint pens don't work in situations of zero gravity.

And NASA spending millions of taxpayer's dollars

came up with a space pen while clever used a regular pencil.

And I went to a website called called snopes.com which s far as I can

tell is the leading fact checking website on the internet and

there was the story up there, and few things came to my attention.

Thing number one that pencils actually don't work that well in space,

because they create tiny particles of dust from graphite or

carbon which mess up with your delicate space equipment.

And thing number two,

American taxpayers didn't pay millions of dollars for the space pen.

It was developed by an independent contractor.

NASA only paid for the pens themselves,

which cost like $160 which I think is a steal for the space pen.

So at that point, how can I trust the rest of the presentation

if the beginning of the story was so inaccurate?

So, go ahead and check that story.

A story is a great motivator.

But as an evidence, it's a bit shaky.

Some people even say that a story is not an evidence at all,

which I think is not exactly true.

If we look at medicine, there is a hierarchy of evidence.

The most robust evidence being systematic reviews and meta-analysis,

and then there are all kinds of possible studies one can make in medicine.

And at the bottom down there is a case report and a case report,

of course, is a story.

Essentially, it's a story properly fact.

A case support is the black swan we are always looking for.

In AIDS, Zika virus and Ebola virus were once those black swans.

It all started with a handful of case reports.

And now we know how to well, treat some of those diseases.

In American Legal System, there are different standards for

proof and they could be reasonable suspicion.

They could be reasonable to believe.

Probable cause for arrest.

Some credible evidence.

Substantial evidence.

Preponderance of evidence.

Clear and convincing evidence, and evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and

I think stories in some context count as some credible evidence.

One may be probable cause for arrest.

In medicine, in law, the culture of case based reasoning.

If you study medicine, you probably know about this more than I do.

In legal professional world, judges always look for

similar situations in the history of legal proceedings.

And in business studies, we teach cases to our students.

And the thinking is that well,

if it worked for Coca-Cola, it might work for you which is always true.

We have to admit.

So if you want to use stories, of course, you can use them for emotional impact.

Of course, you can use them for illustration and

there's a way to provide analogy.

But stories count as evidence in two situations where you have some

critical instance, some new information that challenges the assumption.

Or if you're doing a pilot study, yes, it worked on the small scale.

Let's try it on a bigger scale.

If you want to become a better storyteller, go ahead and

grab some of those books for Hollywood screenwriters.

I think they're great.

This one is my favorite and it says, 22 Steps to Becoming

a Master Storyteller and 22 items is an awfully long list.

And in this book, there's a shorter,

more condensed list of 7 items which have about to tell you and

I will use my previous example for illustration here.

So, you have to have a hero with some weakness.

You have to have a desire to be better to escape those difficulties.

You have to have an opponent and you plan, and then insight.

And while there's no battle in this particular story, but

this might count as a battle known opposition between those two things.

And finally, you have to have a new balance and it might be literally

a new balance sheet which as far as I know worked great for that particular company.

So, seven building blocks.

Weakness, desire, opponent, plan, insight, battle and new balance.

To sum things up.

Stories do motivate.

But as an evidence, well, it's a bit shaky.

Case-based reasoning does work in few contexts like, for example,

if you're reporting crucial instance or

you're reporting pilot studies that you or somebody else has done.

And also one more thing, go ahead and check those details.

Memories are faulty and stories could get out of hand.

You retell the story you’ve heard to somebody else and

it’s a different story altogether, go ahead and check the facts.

Anecdotal

Presentation skills: Speechwriting and Storytelling

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