One thing that always makes me chuckle is when advertisements try to come off like they are not advertisements. The reason I chuckle is not so much because of the blatant attempt to mislead but because the thing that makes them so obvious is how over-the-top they are. You’ve probably seen infomercials, for example, which pretend to be a real show, with a title like “Medical Technology Report” “Evening Report” or “Amazing Product Discoveries.” If you missed the beginning disclaimer that they’re “a paid advertisement” you might think you’re watching an actual interview or report. Of course, the huge amounts of pandering tends to make it obvious most of the time.

Here’s an example of a page in a regional newspaper I picked up to read at a diner. Apologies for the camera phone picture, but you can see that aside from the overly dramatic headlines, the page is laid out like a major news story. It has columns of text and even an author and dateline on it.

 

Is it just me or could an unsavy consumer easily mistake this for an actual scientific/medical/economic report on a new drug discovery?   After all, there have been circumstances where a new medication has made waves in the media and lead to big demand.   For example, Viagra made headlines when it came out.  The first treatment for erectile dysfunction was in high demand.    Here’s the disclaimer.   I tend to think that it wouldn’t be *too* hard to miss this.

 

Considering the need for a full page advertisement, which is obviously designed to look like something it is not, I’d be very skeptical of the claims of this product or any other which resorts to such tactics.   Clearly the intent deceive the reader,(or at least imply something that isn’t)  and if the product actually did what was claimed, that would not be necessary.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Quackery, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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