Power balance scam doing the rounds

[StevoMuso]

Added my name. Hope it helps. 

[Jacques]

Added my name. Hope it helps. 

Thanks for the support, but I submitted the complaint on the 3rd. There will be more, though - C-Prime and all the PowerBalance copycats need attention too.

[Wandapec]

I saw this reference to the magic elastic bands in the Sunday Times in an article by Judith Ancer -

New Year's resolutions, as we normally talk about them to friends and to ourselves, are really wishful thinking, like wishing on a star or a Power Balance bracelet.

[cyghost]

Nuwe studies bewys dit werk!

[Dries van Tonder]

Nuwe studies bewys dit werk!

Dit was fokken snaaks 

[ingwe]

What is the difference between Power balance bracelets and god?


























You can see the bracelet!!

[Wandapec]

Guess what? The YOU magazined did an article that was more skeptical that in was supporting woo for a change - Hollow claims for hologram. It was the only magazine in the car while I was waiting for my wife, I make it a point to not read the YOU magazine because of all the pseudoscience and magical-thinking they like to promote! (I know some people who subscribe to the notion "If it's in the YOU, it must be true!") 

As a joke, the skepticbros.com guys made their own version "The Placebo Band", which is just as effective as the Power Balance version! You can go to their website where they show you how to convince someone that it works and how to get your own magic bracelets made!

I was in Dis-Chem last weekend where I saw that Biogen, a local supplement brand, now have their own version that was set up near the till next to 2 or 3 other makes of magic bracelet (And at the other side of the pharmacy, there are bunch of people behind the dispensary that are trained to council and dispense medicine and treatments based purely on scientific evidence!)   

[BoogieMonster]

Nevermind that these places (Clicks also guilty) also carry shelves full of homeopathic "medicine".

It's laughable, you go there and look for something for a sore throat... you browse the shelves, you find something perfectly OK looking, then you have to first do a detailed inspection for the word "homeopathic" or Dxx (where xx is a number), etc. To determine it is not of homeopathic origin, because if it's not at the back guarded by pharmacists, it probably is.

This is confounded more by these shelves also carrying "natural remedies" of all flavours. To be blunt, these days if I don't have to come face-to-face with a pharmacist to get something, I can almost certainly dismiss it as hocus pocus. (well knowns like paracetemol, etc. excluded, of course)

THE PROBLEM with this is the shelves burdoned with homeopathic solvents/herbs/tissue salts/goats blood/eye of newt, draw legitimacy from the pharmacists in close proximity.

[Rigil Kent]

It was the only magazine in the car while I was waiting for my wife..

And this gets posted on a skeptics forum, nogal. Yeah, yeah - come on, admit it: you're every bit as curious about the skinnernuus surrounding the rich and famous as the rest of us!

Mintaka

[Wandapec]

And this gets posted on a skeptics forum, nogal. Yeah, yeah - come on, admit it: you're every bit as curious about the skinnernuus surrounding the rich and famous as the rest of us!

Mintaka

Shit, I thought that sounded pretty believable...you saw right through it!

[Wandapec]

If you are interested, Angela has got a post on her blog - The Skeptic Detective - on Jacques Rousseau's effort to get Power Balance to be held accountable for the claims they are making by the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa.

[Benjammin]

If you are interested, Angela has got a post on her blog - The Skeptic Detective - on Jacques Rousseau's effort to get Power Balance to be held accountable for the claims they are making by the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa.

Great blog post. Really hope this is successful and soon, it will mean less woo claims in the long run. On the other hand if nothing is done, we will just get more of this kak.