Stealth advertising survey
Stuff has a story that at first glance seems to be about baldness:
There are more men suffering hair loss in Auckland than anywhere in the country, with 42 per cent of those who live in the Super City thinning or completely bald.
In contrast, the hairiest region is Canterbury, where men are more rugged and sport glowing locks. Just 27 per cent of Canterbury men admit to suffering any hair loss.
We aren’t told the sample size or margin of error — if the survey was of 1000 people, you’d expect to get that sort of variation between the highest and lowest regions by chance.
I haven’t been able to find any more detailed results anywhere, but the important part of the story is actually in the next sentence
The headlining Colmar Brunton poll, commissioned by SRS Hair Clinic and released this week, surveyed men aged between 25 and 50.
That is, the point of this survey is to advertise a hair clinic (which sells a hair tonic that claims 100% Natural Ingredients and Zero Side Effects)
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
I see the first claim they make about their tonic on their website (taken from http://www.srshairclinic.co.nz/healthy-hair-tonic/) is “designed to support healthy hair”.
Contrary to what you might think, that doesn’t mean it can help you with hair loss or anything of the sort. Instead, it essentially means “if you have healthy hair, then this shouldn’t mess that up for you. Although we don’t necessarily have any evidence to back that up”. Of course, their target audience doesn’t have healthy hair, so this claim is entirely irrelevant to their product, but I guess they don’t expect their target audience to realise that. I’ve written more about this aspect of the regulations in the past: http://honestuniverse.com/2013/02/12/how-to-read-medical-advertisements/
Advertising that a therapeutic product has no side effects (as they do on that page), violates that Advertising Standards Authority’s codes, specifically Part B1 R4.1 of the Therapeutic Products Advertising Code (http://asa.co.nz/code_therapeutic_products.php)
The reason for this is pretty clear. The only thing that differentiates “side effects” from intended effects is intention. Considering how massively complex the human body is, there is never going to be something that has only a single effect. If something has intended effects, it will have side effects. What I expect they mean when they say it has no side effects is that they have no idea what side effects it has.
If something has no side effects (e.g. homeopathic products) then that will be because it has no effects at all. When it comes to side effects, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
10 years ago
It looks like this hair tonic is possibly the least insidious thing they promote. They’re also an ayurvedic clinic, and promote things such as “Pulsatron Pain Decoder and Magnetic Field Therapy” (http://www.ayurveda.net.nz/remedies/pulsatron-pain-decoder-and-magnetic-field-therapy.html)
10 years ago