The Test That Wasn't a Test

You stand on one leg. Arms out. Someone pushes against your arm. You tip. Then you get something placed in your hand. A band. A stone. A piece of plastic. The test is repeated. You stand. Firmer than before. You feel it. Everyone around you sees it. It works.

Or does it?

I did this test hundreds of times. At trade shows, at events, on the street. It was our best sales tool. No brochure, no promotional video, no testimonial came close to this test. Because you feel it in your own body. And what you feel in your own body, you can’t argue away.

The problem is: It wasn’t a test. It was a demonstration.

The difference sounds small. It’s enormous. A test is designed so that it can also fail. It has control groups, blinding conditions, random assignment. A test wants to find out what is. A demonstration wants to show what should be. A test seeks truth. A demonstration stages a result.

Our balance test couldn’t fail. Not necessarily because the product worked, but because the situation was built so that the outcome was predictable. The demonstrator knew where to push. The first time a bit further out, the second time a bit closer to the body. A few centimeters of difference in the lever arm, and you’re standing more stable. That’s physics, not frequency.

On top of that, there’s the expectation effect. When someone places something in your hand and says this is going to make you stronger, your body tenses differently. You straighten up unconsciously. You brace yourself. Not because the band works. But because you expect it to work.

We knew this. Of course we tried everything internally. Every variation, every stance, every position. The results varied. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. The bottom line pointed to placebo. But that’s not what we took to the trade shows. We took the version that worked.

I’m not telling this to discredit the product. Placebo is real. The effect exists, it’s measurable, it has real impact. People feel better, they perform better, they heal faster. That’s not imagination. That’s science. Just different science than the kind we claimed.

What interests me today is something else. It’s the question of why we’re so bad at telling a demonstration from proof. And I don’t mean the people at our trade shows. I mean all of us.

Every product demo works on the same principle. You see something that looks impressive, in an environment built for it to look impressive. The software salesperson shows you the one feature that shines. The coach does the one exercise with you that lands. The financial advisor shows you the one chart that goes up. And you think: This works. Because you saw it. Because you felt it.

But you didn’t see a test. You saw a demonstration.

The difference isn’t in the show. It’s in the question you ask afterward. After a demonstration, you ask: Did that work? The answer is always yes, because the demonstration is built that way. After a test, you ask: Would the result be the same if I changed the conditions? And that’s exactly the question nobody wants to ask. Not the seller. Not the buyer.

Me neither.

“Just try it” was our standard line. It sounds open, fair, inviting. In reality, it’s the opposite of science. Because it says: Trust your perception. And our perception is the most easily manipulated instrument we have.

I still get a strange feeling today when someone says to me: Just try it. Because I know what that means. It means: We don’t have proof. But we have a demonstration. And that’s usually enough.

This isn’t fraud in the legal sense. It’s something subtler. It’s the collective agreement that experience is more important than verification. That feeling is enough. That you don’t need to look too closely when something feels good.

It took me years to understand that this was the core of it. Not the hologram. Not the silicone. Not the marketing campaign. But this one agreement between seller and buyer: We both pretend the demo is proof.

It wasn’t.