This is not
a long piece, as I’m searching more for what readers think, as opposed to
wanting to make a point. This article relates to product scams and fads that
regularly seem to sweep the world. South Africa is no exception. I’m talking
about things such as wrist bands, which use voodoo spirit summoning to help you
maintain better balance, and herbal footpads, which use ground mushrooms,
vinegar, tea and some sciency-sounding sales pitches to suck all the bad bodily
toxins out of your non-porous feet. Snake Oil has not disappeared from our
world. That same old wolf has just become wise enough to always wear a new
sheep’s clothing.
Now, I am
NOT attempting to start a debate around whether these things work. The simple fact is
that science says that they don’t and, yet, the products still hit our shelves
and people are scammed into spending hundreds of Rand on things that, in the
end, only go so far as to take advantage of the Placebo Effect. For a more
in-depth read around these issues, I would STRONGLY recommend the book ‘Bad
Science’, by Ben Goldacre, which, quite frankly, should be a compulsory High
School read.
Getting now
to the point … let us assume, for the sake of this debate, that these things do
not work. Despite this, many people will swear to the positive benefits that
they have, personally, felt and will even go so far as to say that they do not
care that science cannot back up the product, as it’s what they feel that
matters in the end. In short, these products have ‘anecdotal evidence’ to fall
back on. Despite this being a fallacious ground on which to base your product
pitch, it does raise an important societal issue, one on which my friends and I
cannot ever agree.
What I would
like to know, from you, the reader, is whether you believe that it is alright
that these things are even allowed to hit our shelves. On the one hand, it
could be argued that, in the lack of any supporting scientific evidence, these
things should be kept from the public, i.e. that the state should protect its
citizens from being taken advantage of by people who are only out to make a
hit-and-run buck. On the other hand, there are those who would say that it is a
free market, that, if people are stupid enough to buy these things, then they
deserve to lose their money and that there is, in the end, little harm done,
when people are placebo’d into thinking that they feel better. This is the
skeletal outline of the debate and I will allow for the comments to fill in the
flesh.
What do you all
think?
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