September 10, 2012
Stat of the Week Competition Winner: September 1 – 7 2012
Congratulations to Nick Iversen for her fantastic nomination of a “clinical trial” conducted by Dr. Oz with a great link to Science Based Medicine debunking the study.
James Curran noted that “it’s easy to loose 5lb in water even in the course of a day (on some bike rides in summer I will lose as much as 3-4kg on a 3 hour ride, and usually 1-2kg)”
The article at Science-Based Medicine points out that if the program were an ad it would violate US advertising standards. That’s also true of the NZ standards.
You could probably make a case for it violating NZ Broadcasting Standards 5 (reasonable efforts to ensure it is accurate and/or does not mislead) and 8 (do not deceive or disadvantage the viewer). I’d be reluctant to see that happen, though. I think science-based medicine is better off with the weakest possible restrictions on speech: the bad guys tend to have better lawyers than the good guys.
12 years ago
A search on google.co.nz for green coffee bean extract restricted to NZ results gives over 5500 hits one of which has the headline “Green Coffee Beans Pure Extract recommended by Dr Oz.”
So clearly damage has been done and NZers are going to waste money on this product and also gain weight because they will use this extract instead of methods that work.
Maybe statisticians have a duty to put in a complaint. That would apply more to taxpayer-funded statisticians at the university. You have a duty to serve the taxpayer.
Maybe the publicity, though, would serve only to boost sales.
12 years ago
The great thing about the Advertising Standards is that you don’t need any particular expertise or status.
Anyone can go to their website to get a list of the grounds for complaint, and fill in their online complaint form. They *have to* consider all complaints, and the grounds for complaint are pretty objective and straightforward.
12 years ago