Pseudoscience on the Science Channel
Posted by skeptologic on April 27, 2008
Last week, I criticized Walgreen’s for selling unscientific, untested supplements (Airborne and Homeopathy) in their store. It was particularly disturbing to see these items being sold in the legitimate pharmacy where I go when I need real medicine. Last night, I was disturbed to see pseudoscience on The Science Channel. It wasn’t one of their programs, but rather on a commercial during the program. The commercial was for Dr. Frank’s No Pain Spray. They claimed that the spray would cure pain from Arthritis, Stiffness, Fibromyalgia, Carpal Tunnel, and a lot more. The commercial was also littered with personal testimonials. The ability to cure multiple conditions and anecdotal evidence is what peddlers of pseudo-scientific crap use when there is no real evidence that their product works. But as it turns out, I didn’t even need these red flags to activate my Baloney Detection Kit (thank you Carl Sagan). Right away they tout it as “Dr. Frank’s Homeopathic joint and muscle pain relief.” Ah, homeopathy. I reserve the highest amount of ridicule for this type of alternative medicine. It’s bad enough that they are able to get away with selling people a small bottle of water as medicine for $19.95, but to see this promoted on the Science Channel was very very disheartening. Please watch the very entertaining video below of James Randi describing just how stupid homeopathy is. Oh, and by the way “Dr.” Frank, James Randi has $1,000,000 for you if you can prove your snake oil works. Not that you need it, I’m sure you’ve made much more than that by bilking plenty of people out of their hard earned money by selling them tiny bottles of water.
Melody said
Uck, I know, I see this all the time. As unfortunate as it is that these things are airing, I do use them as teaching moments, when my family is around and I will make some remark such as, “Wait, they’re selling homeopathy? Why not just get some tap water and save me the 20 bucks?” I’ve already explained homeopathy with an analogy of marbles to explain the dilution and how in most cases there’s hardly any molecules or no molecules of the “active” substance left, and the “like cures like”, but my parents forget stuff like that so I sometimes give a shortened version of “it’s diluted down so much that it’s effectively water, and homeopathy proclaims that the dilution makes the active ingredient that may not be present in the bottle have a stronger effect”.
They have a commercial selling a “version” for dogs as well as one for humans. I can’t help but wonder if a person is convinced this will help their dog that they might ignore or minimize joint problems that would warrant vet attention, and dogs can’t talk and say “this homeopathy isn’t helping any”, whereas I think that at least some of the gullible but not woo-ified consumers would quit the product after some time if they don’t notice any significant changes (even if a subset of that group would just hop to another woo remedy).
Have you seen the commercials for something called – Triple Flex I believe it is? It’s basically a chondroitin/glucosamine supplement. That sort of thing is really insidious, too, because it looked much less “infomercial-y” than the homeopathy spray and looked much more like a legitimate OTC treatment in its marketing.
Too bad I don’t get the science channel. I don’t watch much TV though, but I do get the science blogs.