The act of presenting true, but misleading facts to confuse scientifically illiterate
people.
It was named when a
teenager named
Nathan Zohner sought to ban the chemical "Dihydrogen monoxide" from public use. Zohner stated the following things about "Dihydrogen Monoxide"
-It is colorless and tasteless
-It can easily cause suffocation (especially in its liquid form)
-It can burn your skin at high temperatures
-If too much of it is consumed, it can cause a feeling of being bloated, and possibly even death
-And to top it all off, it is present in EVERY stream, river, pond, etc. in the world
...And so on. Zohner then asked his classmates to vote on whether or not to ban "Dihydrogen monoxide." The vote was yes by an extremely large margin. It was at this point that Zohner revealed the
trick: Dihydrogen monoxide is much better known by a much more simple name...
WATER! Everything he stated about
WATER was true; he just distorted them in such a way to make it sound extremely dangerous. Thus, the term "Zohnerism" was born.
Another example of a Zohnerism would be for someone to say that
people should not "Touch their pussies" in front of other
people, and saying that it's "Unsanitary" or it "Gets hair everywhere" This is technically true, so naturally people would be supportive of it. But the word "Pussy" can also refer to a
cat, which the other people did not understand; by exploiting the dirty minds of his peers, the person just tricked his peers into agreeing that people should not pet their
cats in front of other people; but he didn't lie to them at all.
