This change makes a lot of sense and will mean my future complaints about woo and bullshit will be easier to initiate.

Full story at the BBC.

Update:

I just spoke to the ASA and found that the change to their remit takes force on 1st March 2011.

Man at front of queue gestures at bracelets on sale at the counter. The packaging says “Embedded Holographic Technology” and “May improve your strength and swing” etc.

Man at front of queue: Do those really work then?

Boy behind counter: Yeah, I wear one all the time.

Me: Yeah, wearing a hologram on your wrist will really make you better at golf.

Boy behind counter: Well I play off 4.

Man at front of queue: [With slight sarcasm] There must be something in it then.

Me: Yeah, Confirmation Bias.

Anyway I looked these things up and the company behind them is EFX. They have websites for many different countries. I stumbled across the US, UK and Hungarian sites in my top few google hits.

I decided to make a new Trading Standards complaint about it. And here’s my complaint sent to Consumer Direct:

Please would you forward this complaint to Kent Trading Standards, as the body responsible for applying the law in this company’s region.

The company detailed in this complaint is selling a range of products for which there exists no evidence to give backing to the claims they make for their ‘Embedded Holographic Technology”. The products are sold by many websites and shops around the country and are no more than snake-oil.

Allowing such blatant rubbish to be pedaled at the expense of those without a basic understanding of medicine and physics is shameful.

The claim on their website follows – ALL this from a mylar ‘holographic’ device???

A side note – their main US website claims that Mylar is a ‘metallic substance’ when in fact it is a polyester (plastic)… they can’t even get THAT right!

—

Q. What is the major benefit of EFX?

A. EFX helps restore natural in harmony to the body.

The effect is believed to stabilize and harmonize the body’s bioelectric current. When the body is in harmony, the muscles relax, cells un-clump, and blood circulation increases, allowing for greater stability, easier movement and pain relief.

EFX energetic power works instantly. The immediate effects experienced are; increase strength, balance, flexibility and range of motion. EFX products have also been reported to help relieve joint and muscle pain, improve blood circulation, reduce swelling, keep muscles conditioned and flexible, alleviate stress, boost endurance, and prevent motion sickness.

I am still waiting to hear back from the Trading Standards Office in Manchester about the ‘minus-ion’ bracelets I complained about previously. They aren’t obliged to contact me unfortunately but the chap I spoke to there did say he would try and call me when he had something to report.

My top 10 hits were:

1. BMJ Article on trials in 2006.

I don’t have access to this full article but based on other articles that refer to it, the findings were negative and the trial was rigorous.

2. A website trying to sell books on Magnet Therapy

The front page refers to three trials that produced positive results but there are no references to any papers so I cannot check for double-blinding etc.

3. The American Cancer Society

Although there are anecdotal reports of healing with magnetic therapy, available scientific evidence does not support these claims. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers magnets harmless and of no use for medical purposes.

Enough said!

4. A Wikipedia Article

Magnet therapy is considered pseudoscientific due to both physical and biological implausibility, as well as a lack of any established effect on health or healing.

The above quote just from the introduction links to two books and one article alone.

5. Anesthesia and Analgesia

A very good summary on how hard it is to disprove something that has so many claimed benefits. Fortunately trials have been run in some specific areas and if one claim is shown to be false it casts the others in a very poor light. Not only that but when it comes to advertising you have to be able to show evidence for your claims not a lack of evidence to the contrary.

6. Strangely is the same as hit number 5.

7. The ‘evidence’ from a company selling Magnetic Therapy products

There is a vast amount of text on this site and I have read through a good chunk of it. By following a few links one can get some excerpts of research papers which have been published. Some of these excerpts show that the trials were improperly conducted. One on Asthma in children shows that there was no sham group to compare with for example. Another that stood out for me shows such extraordinary results that I wish I had a subscription to the Journal that published it to see if there were any follow-ups or rebuttals.

RESULTS: Wounds in the magnet group healed in an average of 15.3 days, significantly faster than those in either the sham group (20.9 days, P = .006) or control group (20.3 days, P < .0001). There was no statistically significant difference between the sham and control groups (P = .45).

CONCLUSIONS: An externally applied, low-power, static magnetic field increases the rate of secondary healing. Review of the literature reveals conflicting evidence regarding the use of magnetic energy to aid the healing of bone, tendon, and skin. Level I studies are lacking and difficult to execute but are needed to define conclusively the role of magnets in clinical practice.

Eplasty: Journal of Burns and Wounds. 2008 July. 25;8:e40. PMID: 18725953

The claim is that a magnet caused the rats’ wounds to heal 25% quicker. That’s an astonishing claim and one that ought to be researched further if there has been no flaws found in the trial. But putting myself in the place of a researcher on the trial I can think of a dozen problems that might be found, e.g.

• I made the wounds on the control group a little deeper
• I treated the control group a little more roughly when measuring their progress
• I fed and watered the magnet group with more/better food

etc. etc.

8. A site with links to trials with positive outcomes

There are more than twenty trials listed here but not a single one of them is one of those that reported nothing more than a placebo effect. Since those studies exist and since nowhere on this site, as far as I can find, do they mention any doubts about the efficacy of the treatment, there is an obvious bias here. I didn’t take the time to read all of the studies but to take the first one mentioned:

At 4 hours, VAS pain scores (+/- SE) on a 5-item scale (0-500, 500 worst) decreased 79 +/- 18 mm in the active group and 10 +/- 21 mm in the placebo group (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in any primary or secondary measure of efficacy between the treatment groups at 6 weeks. Despite widespread testing for magnetic properties, at study end, 69% of the active group and 77% of the placebo group (P > 0.2) believed that they had been assigned to the active treatment group. CONCLUSION: Despite our small sample size, magnets showed statistically significant efficacy compared to placebo after 4 hours under rigorously controlled conditions.

I don’t see how they can possibly have that conclusion! After a session the patients showed better pain reduction with magnets than with sham treatment. Fair enough but has there been any attempt to blind the medical staff giving the treatment from whether it is real or sham? Studies have shown that this is hugely important to the outcome. It is not mentioned.

The final outcome after six weeks of treatment shows no difference in efficacy. That alone shows that the treatment was no more than placebo. After the trial is over the subtleties of patient response to the professional will have decayed and the actual efficacy becomes more apparent to the patient.

Given that the above disagree with each other, I have to conclude that the response to a session must be down to some factor during the session, that possibly being the professional’s knowledge of which treatment is being administered.

9. Alternative Medicine at About.com

Reference is made to 5 papers and the site must be given some credit for appearing balanced. However it does end up being rather confused because of it. It starts by saying there is little evidence but then states.

Even though claims that magnetic therapy can treat diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis are unfounded, there is some evidence that it may help relieve pain related to these chronic conditions

It claims that Arthritic and Pelvic pain studies are positive. On the other hand it states that a fybromalgia study failed to account for the better quality of beds patients were resting in and that

in studies on the use of magnetic therapy for relief of chronic low back pain and wrist pain related to carpal tunnel syndrome, researchers found magnets no more effective than placebo treatments

Again, credit to them for at giving both positive and negative findings.

10. The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

There is actually the best source of information in the top 10 links. It gives a good overview of what the treatment has been used for, historically and contemporarily, what magnets are, how they are used, what the speculation is over what they might do, and what the trials show.

Preliminary scientific studies of magnets for pain have produced mixed results. Overall, there is no convincing scientific evidence to support claims that magnets can relieve pain of any type. Some studies, including a recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical trial for back pain, suggest the possibility of a small benefit from using magnets for pain. However, the majority of rigorous studies have found no effect on pain.

Notice they say preliminary and notice that they go on to say:

More research on magnets for pain is needed before reaching any firm conclusion.

More rigorous research is needed before reaching any firm conclusions about the effectiveness of magnets for pain.

They have been very professional in their approach to the topic but I do think those two statements indicate they really really want to believe it’ll work. I’d disagree and say that the best run studies have shown there is no benefit above placebo and that they constitute a large enough body of evidence to put the subject to rest. Either way it’s a good page on the subject.

Summary

So far I have not found any good quality trials with positive results. I haven’t even found any trials yet that cover most of the claims of the Trion:Z bracelets – reduced stress, better concentration, more powerful golf swings etc! The Cochrane Organization doesn’t have any meta-analyses on any Magnet-related subject.

I’ve short-listed 20 websites in the UK that are currently selling these products and have initiated a conversation with the Trading Standards Institute.

Minus Ions are generally abundant in nature through plants, waterfalls, rain storms and forests. These Ions unfortunately are depleted in urban areas as a result of modern technology.

So the logical conclusion must be that before urbanisation and technology, the world was infused with ‘Minus Ions’. A Negative Ion is, of course, an atom carrying an extra electron. So the question is where did all those extra electrons come from back then and where did they go to since? Not to mention why de-ionising myself would be good, even if it happened, and by what method it might produce any of the results that the various sites claim – from reducing stress, to improving the power of your golf swing.

Most of the websites selling these things claim they use ‘Medical Grade Magnets’. I did a search for this term. It ONLY appears in the context of Woo like this, never in any official medical context. And what would a medical grade magnet be anyway? A particularly clean one?

I will update more as things progress.

A well known UK internet shop that specialises in gifts/gadgets sent me an email before Christmas advertising the latest additions to its catalogue. The main part of the image-based email was a large advert for a watch. Particularly a watch that looked exactly like this one here or here.

The watch is made with Tourmaline and claims to improve circulation, relieve stress and several other claims are made of the same ilk.

Since I knew this was all Bullshit! (TM Penn and Teller) I decided to make a complaint. It’s a bit complicated to work out exactly who you have to complain to but eventually I worked out I could approach the Advertising Standards Authority under one sections of their remit:

• Commercial e-mail and SMS text message ads

You would have thought that I could also complain to the ASA about the advert on the website, but that is not covered by their remit, bizarrely:

• Advertisements on the Internet, including banner and display ads and paid-for (sponsored) search (not claims on companies’ own websites)

For the advert on their website I had to look further. First I headed over to Consumer Direct. That didn’t help much though as their advice covers how to go about making complaints on transactions you have been involved in.

Trading Standards were the people I wanted, not to be confused with the Office of Fair Trading, although I couldn’t tell you why both exist or what each do. Trading Standards is a function of each county council. But when you drill down through the web pages you find out that, even though you (I) couldn’t find it there, you actually need to go and talk to Consumer Direct!

So I did. I emailed them and they passed my query to my council’s trading standards department (even though I had shown that the company and its website were based in a different region, ‘whois’ rocks!).

Oh, my complaint! I simply pointed out that the claims made in the advert and the email were unsubstantiated, citing the lack of any medical papers on the subject etc etc.

I never did hear anything back from Trading Standards but they apparently don’t normally contact the complainant anyway. They investigate and take action. Whether they did do anything I don’t know. I hope so!

But I did get a response from the ASA. Two letters. One came in about a month after my complaint, on December 21st, stating what their procedures would involve them doing – contacting the company and asking them to comment on the complaint and provide evidence to backup their claims before making a decision.

The second letter came on 4th February and it states:

We contacted ##### Ltd to ask for their comments on the complaint and for them to submit evidence to substantiate their claims. They responded by advising that the claims were given to them by a third party supplier and that they had subsequently withdrawn the ad with no plans to use it again.

We reminded ##### of the responsibility of advertisers under the CAP Code to ensure that the claims they publish are supported by robust evidence. However in light of their response, we no longer believe that there is a need to put the matter to the ASA Council for an adjudication. Instead we have sought a written assurance from ##### that th claims will not be used again.

One piece of Woo/Bullshit! (TM Penn and Teller) down. Several million to go.