The September 21, 2006 indictment of the maker of dietary supplements that claims to improve everything from sexuality to memory, was yet another indictment in the long running battle between federal authorities, the charlatans that produce these unregulated products, and the badly informed public that purchases billions of dollars of such products.
The federal indictment names Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, its owner and president, Steven Warshak, and five other individuals, including Warshak’s mother, on charges that include conspiracy, money laundering, and mail, wire and bank fraud. They are accused by federal authorities of luring customers with free-trial offers and money-back guarantees, then billing their credit cards without authorization. They are accused of defrauding thousands of customers and banks of at least $100 million according to federal authorities.
The underlying question is how can tens of millions of people purchase such worthless supplements? The answer is primarily that Americans are woefully uneducated in the rudiments of basic science. This ignorance makes these types of consumers prey for supplement companies. The fact that tens of millions of American’s believe in government conspiracies, Bigfoot and Roswell are dubious signs. Lawrence Krauss writes in Stop the Flying Saucer, I Want to Get Off[1] that “mountains of statistics suggest that the public is far more susceptible to scientific nonsense than political nonsense. More than half of Americans are unaware that the earth orbits the sun and takes a year to do it”.
Everyone from university president’s to members of Congress to the National Science Foundation all agree on one thing: the ignorance of the basic sciences amongst American citizens is perilous; both in the short and long term. When you take these facts into consideration, and then combine it with radio advertising that attempts to manipulate this lacking, it is a sure fire way for manipulation.
Print and media advertising rates in the last decade has dropped considerably. Be it the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, CNN or the airwaves of the radio; even small mom and pop companies are finding that advertising in such media can have a profoundly positive impact on their bottom line.
Does Radio = Bad Science
In the New York City area, one of the most popular news radio stations is WCBS 880AM (www.newsradio88.com). With a listening base of over two million listeners[2], WCBS can offer surprisingly reasonably affordable advertising rates. This is a boon to local advertisers who want to reach the masses, yet are constrained by their limited advertising budgets. The combination of inexpensive advertising and a large listening audience is a compelling value proposition.
What is worrisome is that for some radio stations, their requirement to accept advertising is often not more than the ability to pay. For consumers, this makes radio a veritable boiler room for many products and services that are often ineffective. According to WCBS-AM “the station will take most things for advertising; as long as they do not hurt the integrity and credibility of the station.[3]”
What all of these companies are accomplishing in their radio advertisement is that they are preying upon the desperation of people who are trying to lose weight, stop smoking, stop cancer, or change whatever malady that affects them.
It’s not called a boom box for nothing
When one reads, they are in control of the speed of their reading. But with radio the only item the listener can control is the volume, as there is no way a listener can control the speed of the announcer. With that, it is easy for advertisers to hurriedly throw out impressive sounding pablum, without giving the listener the time to understand and digest what they are hearing.
These advertising claims are made hurriedly with a language that is often filled with abstract, vague and utterly meaningless pseudo-scientific terms. When these advertisements are for products with dubious creditability, consumers will often take these advertisements at face value, without analyzing the claims deeper.
Much of the bogus advertising is for areas that consumers are willing to traditionally spend large amount of money: health care, weight loss and sex products. These areas are chosen since government regulation is woefully inadequate. Of course, if the ever growing population of obese people would stop buying supplement after supplement, and denying they have a problem, and instead take a pragmatic approach such as discovering Overeaters Anonymous (www.oa.org), they might perhaps lose all of their unwanted fat.
But until consumers starting taking responsibility for their problems, as opposed to popping supplement after supplement, the proprietors of these shenanigans will continue to use radio to promote their wares. With that, radio advertisers love to use meaningless scientific terms that sound impressive to a person without a background in science. Some of which are:
Published in a prestigious medical journalRandomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial Doctor recommended 100% naturalThere Are Many More Examples
These are but a sampling of the many radio advertisements that are fraught with misleading, deceptive, ambiguous and confusing statements. For every company listed in this article, there are ten ready to take their place.
In fact, the modus operandi of many of these supplement companies is to market one product for a few months, and then use the same marketing ploy for yet another product. Be it Hoodia or whatever the scam of the month is. Hoodia supplement companies are yet another example of where firms are raking in astronomical sales as demand for Hoodia weight loss pills skyrocket.
For as long as the consumers will listen to the radio, the stations will be more than happy to fill their advertising coffers.
Barnum was right
It all comes down to the fact that talk is indeed cheap. Be it in real life, or via radio advertisement. The end result is the PT Barnum was right, there is a fool born every minute. Having a PhD in biology and statistics shouldn’t be a requirement for listening to AM radio. Yet with all of the bad science in the airwaves, consumers need to be warned of the dangers and skeptical of the smooth talking miscreants.
Whether they are listening to New York or Miami news radio, the airwaves are filed with bogus claims of con men. Ponzi died long away, but lives on in different variations of his con game. Listeners need to take caveat emptor to heart in many of their purchases, as the buyer alone is responsible for assessing the quality of a purchase before buying. Listeners can’t rely on the understaffed FDA, or the radio station in collusion with the advertisers to ensure that the products are worthy.
While the FDA has their disclaimers, if the FCC had their, it would likely be:
New York news radio stations are not intended to provide real information, nor help you in any way. Your ad dollars are appreciated all the time. We mislead you, and you have no recourse.
[1] New York Times February 22, 1999
[2] http://wcbs880.com/pages/2134.php
[3] Via e-mail communication – December 2003