In
advertising in particular,
science is used as a sort of
theme instead of an
argument. This avoids making claims that have to be backed up (which they may not be able to). For example, a particular
headache advert used a graph as the background for the poster. However, while the large yellow line was undoubtedly going upwards in a sort of ramp shape, the graph had
no labels.
There was no indication of what the changing variable was - even whether it was related to headaches. Resistor response to voltage, black body radiation, speed of a car on a journey from Land's end to Penzance? Who knows.