Woozle effect

[5] The term "woozle effect" was coined by Beverly D. Houghton in 1979[6][7][8] during a panel discussion, in order: "...to critique the burgeoning belief in a myth/archetype [of] the batterer emerging from the [then] virtually nonexistent literature and the popular press.

[12][13] Gelles and Straus argue that the woozle effect describes a pattern of bias seen within social sciences and which is identified as leading to multiple errors in individual and public perception, academia, policy making, and government.

[19] Gambrill and Reiman (2011) also link it with more deliberate propaganda techniques; they also identify introductory phrases like "Every one knows ...", "It is clear that ...", "It is obvious that ...", "It is generally agreed that ..." as alarm bells that what follows might be a Woozle line of reasoning.

[15] One notable example of the effect can be seen in citations of "Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics", a letter to the editor by Jane Porter and Hershel Jick published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980.

[29] In 2007, Purdue and three of the company's senior executives pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges that they had misled regulators, physicians and patients about the addiction risk associated with taking OxyContin.

[30] The authors of the 2017 NEJM letter suggested that the inappropriate citations of the 1980 study played a role in the North American opioid epidemic by under-representing the risk of addiction:[28] the page for the Porter and Jick letter on the Journal's website now includes a note informing the reader that it "has been 'heavily and uncritically cited' as evidence that addiction is rare with opioid therapy".

[27] In a study conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice, Weiner and Hala (2008) reported some of the research-related difficulties associated with measuring human trafficking.

After Michigan resident Geraldine Hoff Doyle said in 1994 that she was the real-life model for the poster, many sources repeated her assertion without checking the two foundational assumptions: that Doyle was the young factory worker pictured in a 1942 wartime photograph, and that the photograph had inspired commercial artist J. Howard Miller to create the poster.

In 2015, Kimble found the original photographic print of the factory worker, its caption identifying the young woman as Naomi Parker, working in California in March 1942, when Doyle was still in high school.

Piglet and Pooh go in circles hunting a Woozle—but the tracks they follow are merely their own.
Geraldine Hoff Doyle claimed to have been the inspiration for the "We Can Do It!" poster, achieving fame and honors when her statement – likely false – was repeated without confirmation.