So I was watching a taped episode of Battlestar Galactica. When I turned it off, I saw an infomercial for "Vital Therapy Copper Cream". They say it "includes a proprietary copper formulation that guarantees results for joint and muscle pain". The small print on their website of course says that the copper is an "inactive ingredient", and that they "make no health claims whatsoever". (I guess pain relief must not legally count as a "health claim"?)
Anyway, all that is to be expected and nothing new. What I've never seen before, though, was the small print onscreen during one of the testimonials: "results not typical". That really gets to the core of testimonials, doesn't it?
Someone told me that this sort of thing is so rampant in China that they just decided to ban testimonials in advertising altogether. I've heard of worse ideas, actually.
In any case, this is hardly the worst product out there. At least it has actual active ingredients (camphor and menthol), so it probably works as well as most cooling creams out there. It's just the copper stuff that's bullshit. (Their website advertises silver and tin versions, too. I guess people just like random metals?) But yeah, this is much better than things like those Q-Ray "Ionized Bracelets" that were supposed to relieve pain and increase stamina and all that.
Luckily, in that case, the FTC eventually sued the Q-Ray folks and won an injunction, so that the Q-Ray testimonials just say they're "great" now. :) Even their "What does it do?" page now only says that it can "enhance individual performance and support active lifestyles". Their FAQ page is quite ingenious though. It contains the following entry: Q: "Can I wear the bracelet if I am pregnant?" A: "Consult your physician before wearing if you are pregnant or believe that you might be pregnant." :P I hope their ionized bracelets help them sleep at night...
I wish there were a better website for quackery. There's Quackwatch, but it's pretty terribly organized. If only someone would make something like Snopes for quackery.
(Btw, if you really care, go google this stuff yourself. I didn't want to help their pagerank by linking. :P)
Comments (1)
Some well meaning friend once gave my mom a bottle of some kind of liquid salty trace mineral supplement. Reading the ingredients label was like reading the periodic table--except for the obvious no-nos, like Uranium and Radium, pretty much anything you can think of was there. I remember Ytterbium and Strontium cracking me up. It just sounded so fancy, it had to be good for you!
Posted by SSR | June 18, 2005