Why the last sentence carries the position

The paragraph gives both sides four sentences each. It closes on the one about the risks, and every reader summarises it as a warning. Reverse the two closing sentences, change nothing else, and the same paragraph is remembered as reassurance.

What everyone sees

Fairness is understood as allocation — equal space, both positions represented, no adjectives doing unearned work. Allocation is only part of it. Order is a separate variable, and the item that arrives last occupies the position from which the reader forms the summary they will keep.

What is actually happening

Hogarth and Einhorn’s belief-adjustment model formalised order effects in evidence integration, finding recency dominant when items are processed one at a time in short sequences with mixed content — conditions that describe ordinary reading closely. Haugtvedt and Wegener tested message order in persuasion and found the effect conditional on involvement: highly involved audiences showed primacy, weighting what came first, while less involved audiences showed recency, weighting the close. The two results together say something less convenient than a simple rule. There is no neutral order — the sequence a writer chooses interacts with how carefully the audience is reading, and the writer usually knows neither.

Why it stays hidden

The asymmetry hides because it survives verification. Anyone auditing the passage counts sentences and finds balance, and the reader who summarises it can quote both sides accurately while still reproducing the closing lean. Nothing in the text is false, and nothing in the count is wrong.