Category: Altie Meds

Jeanette Winterson offers her “defence” in the Guardian, and I can’t wait for Ben Goldacre to rip into it.

She starts with this classic argument from anecdote:

Picture this. I am staying in a remote cottage in Cornwall without a car. I have a temperature of 102, spots on my throat, delirium, and a book to finish writing. My desperate publisher suggests I call Hilary Fairclough, a homeopath who has practices in London and Penzance. She sends round a remedy called Lachesis, made from snake venom. Four hours later I have no symptoms whatsoever.

Dramatic stuff, and enough to convince me that while it might use snake venom, homeopathy is no snake oil designed for gullible hypochrondriacs

Actually, the fact that she thinks this is a valid argument shows that it is snake oil designed for gullible hypochondriacs. As they say, the plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data.

It get’s worse – ready for some quantum water woo?
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I’m continuing to bore you with the Federal Trade Commission’s report on Consumer Fraud in the United States.

Would it be surprising to hear that individuals with higher levels of debt are more likely to be victims of fraud?

Yes, people in debt can be desperate, and thus be more likely to fall for scams, but there is another reason–people in debt are highly targeted by listbrokers (companies that sell lists of consumers). DirectMag’s Listfinder has over 400 lists of debtors for sale. Scammers can buy these lists and target these populations for their frauds.

The good news is that, generally, educational attainment reduces the risk of falling victim to a consumer scam, but not by much.

Related post: Could Scientific Thinking Help Curb Consumer Fraud?

The Federal Trade Commission just released their second report on Consumer Fraud in the United States. Since it is full of interesting information, I’m going to do several posts on the Commission’s findings.

First a quick notes about methods: this report presents findings from 3,888 telephonic interviews of Spanish and English speaking adults. The Commission oversampled to ensure that several minority groups were strongly represented, because it is believed that inadequate attention is being paid in particular to scams against Latinos with limited English skills.

Despite the limitations of telephonic surveys, I think that these studies are essential, because several biases operate to make individuals not take consumer protection issues seriously. There is optimism bias, but there is also a general dismissiveness of these problems. I frequently hear individuals deny that there is a problem with a certain practice, because it doesn’t affect them. When one considers consumer protection seriously, one has to consider how framing, limited attention, differences in education, limited language skills, age, and gullibility may make all of us likely to fall victim to a scam at one time or another.

So, I doubt many people who read Scienceblogs buy scam weight loss products. You know something about science, so claims that you can lose weight by eating everything in sight are probably suspect, but you also are probably more skeptical of claims of product efficacy. Now, would you be surprised to learn that 4.8 million Americans reported falling victim to 8.3 million incidents of weight-loss product frauds?

Now, what’s shocking is that because people generally don’t like to admit that they have been swindled, and because the Commission’s definition of weight loss fraud is so narrow (“only those who indicated either that they lost only a little of the weight they had expected to lose or that they did not lose any weight were counted as victims of weight-loss fraud”), the numbers of victims and incidents are probably much higher.

There are many different approaches to dealing with consumer fraud. One can bring lawsuits, the government can prosecute scammers, industries can initiate self-regulatory programs, and there’s always consumer education. These approaches all have strengths and weaknesses. But I wonder whether general science education could help–whether teaching individuals to be more skeptical of claims and evidence–could curb fraud. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the data to tell. But in the next few posts, I am going to talk about some of the trends we can see in fraud, and what these mean for consumers.

CNN suggests there are 5 (count them 5) alternative medicine treatments that actually work! How pathetic is it for altie-meds that the article is presented this way. You know, 5 altie-med therapies that work versus, well, all real pharmaceuticals that actually have proven medical effects. As many have pointed out, if it works, it ceases to be “alternative” and then becomes evidence-based medicine. But let’s not take this for granted, let’s go over this list presented by altie-quack Andrew Weil.

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The ads work, that is. HeadOn, that homeopathic (and therefore completely ineffective) head rub for head pain isn’t effective. But it’s still selling, because advertising and propaganda often trumps evidence! Mya Frazier of AdAge reports:

Those rapid-fire “HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead” spots are arguably among the worst commercials ever from a creative standpoint. They’re annoying, repetitive, obnoxious — and effective.
Clutter buster: HeadOn ads seem amateurish and mindnumbing, but the company’s marketing chief said consumers remember them.

[…]

HeadOn is logging some heady growth rates — 234% from 2005 to 2006. And for the first half of 2007, the brand looks to be on track to double sales. HeadOn ranks No. 9 in the external-analgesics-rubs category and logged $6.5 million in sales last year, up from just $1.9 million in 2005, according to Information Resources Inc. That’s not including Wal-Mart, who is “one of our biggest customers” Mr. Charron said.

Miralus’ ActivOn, for joint pain, launched in 2006, has leapfrogged past HeadOn, topping out at $5.5 million in sales and jumping to the No. 6 spot in the $278 million external-analgesic-rubs category. Within that category, Head-On is stealing share from such brands as Icy Hot, which was up just 4.4% in 2006; Bengay, which was down 2.5% last year; and Aspercreme, down 12.6% in 2006. (The last for a long time had its own cheesy tagline, “You bet your sweet Aspercreme,” since changed to “You bet if it’s Aspercreme.)

[…]

Mr. Charron is a big believer in focus groups and takes a rather unconventional approach to this most traditional of research tools. “Our No. 1 priority is recall,” said Mr. Charron, and sounding a bit like the HeadOn spots himself, he added: “It’s all about recall. It’s all about recall.”

Instead of testing the commercials against other headache remedies or other health-care advertising, Mr. Charron has tested HeadOn spots instead against what he refers to as ad clutter. “Odds are, 99% of the time, our ad won’t be next to a headache remedy anyway but a car ad or electronics ad or food ad,” he said.

[…]

But if the HeadOn story is inspiring as a case study, remember, it’s all about the long haul. Despite the buzz and the impressive sales growth figures, Miralus isn’t in the black yet.