I Have the Power...Bracelet

Oh, so many absurdities.  What is it about our civilization that seems to force at least a marginal percentage of the population into complete ignorance of empirical value?  What is it that has us put any level of trust into unsubstantiated claims - admittedly unsubstantiated claims?  There's a reason the psychic hotline commercials flash the words For entertainment purposes only at the bottom of your television screen.  There is a reason that the overpriced bottles of water you buy at your local homeopathic shops can never make any actual medical claims (and should be forced to read, "Very expensive pee inside.").  But what is the reason for the lack of disclaimer in the human brain that should say, "Hey, just because athletes are wearing this, doesn't mean it has any real-life relevance.  Maybe, just maybe, they're being paid to promote the product like the incredibly, unusually hot woman at the bar who keeps ordering the same drink and keeps talking to random guys about how good it is.."

In this particular sense, I'm talking about something I noticed back in 2008, and apparently I was a year behind the trend, per usual.  The trend is called the Power Balance bracelet, and packs within it some of the most unbelievably unsubstantiated, and at times, impossible, claims I've heard since I was first introduced to Astrology as a teenager.  These claims are also admittedly unsubstantiated by the makers of the product, which you can read about here in an article from Yahoo! Sports from January of this year.

The claims in particular is that these bracelets have the ability to interact with the body's natural energy to increase balance, speed, endurance, flexibility, strength (by 500%), and from something I read about a while ago, I heard they're also known to cause Spidey-Sense.  Now keep in mind, I'm not talking about the power bracelet worn by Link in The Legend of Zelda, I'm talking about a real life item here, that actually claims to have similar powers of magic and mystery, while interacting with an energy field just as magical and mysterious.  Even the great and powerful Shaquille O'Neal swears by them, citing they're the secret to his success.  Though, I don't remember him doing anything of note since I was a kid (and by "of note" I don't mean Shaq-Fu) and Power Bracelets have only been out since 2007.  Are they retroactive?  Do they posses the power of reverse time travel on top of all of their mystical powers?

The Evidence
Just briefly, for the sake of argument, let's examine the evidence in favor of the Power Balance bracelet.  The first piece of evidence is that the makers say the bracelets give you powers.  The last piece of evidence is that paid spokespersons say they give you powers.  Since both of these are merely unproven conjecture, let's move on to the evidence against the bracelets.  A study was performed by the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) in 2010 which used actual scientific methods - imagine that - to determine the effects of the bracelets vs that of placebo.  Four bracelets were used in the experiment, with only one of them being an authentic Power Balance bracelet.  All four were wrapped in tape so that none of the participants, nor the scorekeepers of the event, knew which person was wearing the authentic one.  According to the athletic trial results, in each trial, the results of placebo were exactly the same as the results of the bracelet. Zero statistical significance.  Conclusion A: Power Balance bracelets are placebo and nothing more.

Next, researchers at RMIT's School of Health and Sciences duplicated the above experiment, finding the same result.  Something to note: These researchers were chiropractors.  If you have people as low in the field of pseudoscience such as chiropractors saying that your product is bunk and has no empirical truth to it, that really says something.  Conclusion B: Power Balance bracelets are placebo and nothing more.

The website's own videos, before being removed earlier this year, showed videos of people stretching without, then with the power bracelet on their wrists.  One person would stretch a few times, then apply the bracelet, and stretch again, showing increased flexibility.  Problem A: There's no way of actually knowing if the person was stretching to their fullest extent in the first place.  Problem B: We have no time scale as reference.  Problem C: A person always becomes slightly more flexible from one stretch to another.  This is why it's called stretching in the first place.  This shows intent to provide misleading experimental results, and to me, in what I refer to as the d factor, counts as negative evidence, as deceptive experimental presentation not only demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the product, but that the producers of the conclusions know the product are completely aware.  Conclusion C: Power Balance bracelets are placebo and nothing more; and their product is knowingly deceptive (d=3x10^-4).

A Deeper Concern
What you're looking at in a Power Bracelet is a silicone version of a power crystal.  Yet, even after the company was forced to recant any and all claims that power crystals improve your performance in any way, people still buy them.  People still sell them in airports.  People can still by them on websites for ovarian cancer, which is deeply troubling to me, as it doesn't take a marketing genius to see the implications of that.  You can still buy them online for the same price they were before they were forced to admit their product was absolute hokum, and people still buy them.  Their projected sales in 2011 aren't that far off from their $30 million in sales the previous year.  Now, we all know definitively that the power of this product is entirely a work of fiction, but - I can't stress this enough - people are still buying them!

The company can legally no longer use the term "performance technology" in their ads or their packaging.  The company can legally no longer claim that their product increases performance of any kind beyond that of placebo.  The company had to, at its own expense, release a series of ads correcting previous claims of the bracelet increasing a person's strength, flexibility, or performance.  They can legally no longer say the bracelets are designed to work with the body's natural energy field.  Plus, they legally had to offer full refunds, with postage, to each and every person who had ever purchased their product.  The makers of the product were forced to publicly denounce their own product in front of the world to drive the point home that their product is for entertainment purposes only.  What more do you need?

This is indicative of a much deeper problem than just one product.  This is, itself, the entire reason I write this blog: People will continue to believe things, even at their expense, no matter the lack of evidence, or even the contrary evidence to the affects of a product, entity, or practice.  I understand that people these days have a level of mistrust toward science, and are therefore always looking for alternatives.  This is one of the reasons for the vast disconnect between science and the general populace.  Science is hard to follow in many ways for someone who doesn't maintain an interest.  "How can those physicists and cosmologists know the age of the universe when they weren't there?" someone may ask; although, if they read a little deeper and followed the fields with a level of interest, they would actually see how simple it is for them to know using very easy step by step processes.  They may also say that organizations such as the FDA are unreliable for certain reasons.  While I will admit there are conflicts of interest.  I don't understand for the life of me why most of it is made up of pharmaceutical executives (those who've only worked on the financial and monetary side of medical science) instead of the scientists who actually produce the medicines in the first place (those who may actually know what they're talking about and have a substantiated authority on matters of medicine).  However, this does not make the FDA untrustworthy in the long run.  In fact, I would venture to say that if even the FDA won't approve something, that says something about the value of the product itself (I refer you back to the Chiropractor point I made before regarding the magic bracelets).

I understand the distrust toward modern science, but it is entirely unsubstantiated and based on misunderstandings and disconnects.  Scientists are here to help people and make the world a better place.  If we weren't, we wouldn't have gone into our various fields, which, on average, have very limited earning potential.  Therefore, if the entirety of modern science is telling you that you're just throwing money down the drain by purchasing a product, then why would you not listen and at least investigate a little?  The claims made by power bracelets are no more absurd than the claims made by astrologers, psychics, homeopathic retailers; and I think most people know that none of those fields are worth the paper their professions' names are written on.  Why, then, do people still continue to visit the astrologer, the psychic, the homeopathic doctor, and the chiropractor?  Is it a pure lack of critical thinking, or are people really just that lazy that they'll just believe what they're told by any quack with a website (because they won't give just anybody one of those)?  I personally believe the latter.

Laziness is not a trait unknown to humans.  Let's face it: Many people would rather drive four blocks to the convenience store than walk it, even though it's only a few blocks away, and the walk might actually be beneficial to you and to the environment.  But that's not the laziness I'm talking about.  I'm referring to intellectual laziness, when combined for a desire for power and an unwillingness to do anything to gain it, this causes people to resort to believing crazy claims in the hopes that they can get that one hour workout in five minutes; they can see into the future to see what they should be doing in the present; they can burn a candle and speak a few archaic words and they'll somehow get rich; and worse than any of it, they'll actually believe a single word written in The Secret.  This creates a need for faith in people which is ultimately destructive to them.  These people will pump as much money as they can into crazy products, churches, sprititualists, "advisers", and other entities in order to obtain something without having to work for it.  Combine this physical laziness with intellectual laziness, and you have someone who would rather go broke than not subscribe faith into every shortcut that is offered to them, no matter how absurd it sounds, and no matter how unsubstantiated it is.  Just believing what they're told and having faith is easier than reading a little bit about such claims.

Intellectual laziness is a trait that is so common among people that it sort of hurts to think about - which is coincidental of me to say, because looking at so many people in this country, one would assume that thinking must be painful or at least incredibly straining.  Yes, it is easier to just believe what you're told than to compare all of the available evidence and come to your own educated conclusions.  Yes, just thinking that everything happens because it happens, is a lot easier than questioning why and how things happen.  It's much easier to just walk down the sidewalk without thinking about it at all, instead of thinking of all of the physical principles you're applying when walking, not to mention what's happening under your feet at the subatomic level with every step you take.  Many people don't find this interesting, and I think the only reason for this is because it all seems too daunting.  The big words; the hard equations; the imagination; the scientific method and process; it's all so much harder.  Yet, you'll notice that when you read one book on science, you have to read another, and another, and another, until you're a sponge soaking up information and you're doing your own experiments at home, in time, based after your own original hypotheses.  The problem is that most people don't take that first step because of a laziness that is brought about by fear - the fear that they may not be able to understand it.  But the more you read, the easier it all becomes, until you're up at 5:00 AM conclusively disproving the young earth creation story using the speed of light with one hand, and eating your Cheerios with the other (read about this here on August 1).

Just that one boost could be the difference between a life of ignorance and a life of scientific inquiry and success.  But most never receive that boost.  Their parents never encourage it, or they never get over the fear of feeling stupid, or they didn't have the best teachers, or any number of reasons.  Maybe they grew up in a cult and never had access to scientific papers.  Who am I to judge?  What I can do is say that this first step is something that we, as a society, need to start concerning ourselves with.  People need to see just how cool the universe is before they can develop an interest.  If that scientific interest were to be developed in more people, we would see psychics, astrologers, and Power Bracelets diminished within just a generation or two.  And how great of a world would that be?

Thanks for reading.  Next week, I'll be posting a few experiments I performed with face-to-face psychics and telepsychics a few years ago that were quite fun to perform, and should be very fun to read.  And on the first of the month, I'll be introducing a new feature to the blog called Monthly Arguments Against Evolution, where I'll be choosing one particular argument against the theory of evolution to burn to the ground on a monthly basis.  Keep smiling and always be skeptical.

That's Allstate's Stand. Are you a Virgo?

There are plenty of reasons to encourage critical thinking among people.  There are people who refuse to have their children vaccinated because they have a personal hypothesis - without evidence of any kind - that vaccines cause autism or lower Intelligence Quotients among children.  There are grown parents who don't seek medical attention for their children because they feel that faith and prayer will cure the child better than modern medicine.  There are even people in this day and age who deny the holocaust ever happened, think the universe is 6,000-years-old, and believe in vampires.  What do all of these people have in common?  A clear lack of critical thinking and a clear lack of regard toward the eminence and implications of evidence.

The worst part of all is how this translates in our society.  We have senators arguing against emissions regulations by quoting from the bible, saying that God won't let the world end until he's good and ready.  We have states in the south suggesting prayer to solve their budget crises.  And how many people do you know who are undoing the goodness that is human evolution, and also subjecting themselves to illnesses that humans thought they'd done away with a century ago, by subscribing to raw food diets?  I'm going to talk about one particular instance in which a clear-cut lack of critical thinking could end up costing you money, and probably already has.

Click here to read a rather disturbing study that was performed by the car insurance company Allstate.  The study cited this:

The company said its comparison of 2010 claims data against the revised astrological calendar found Virgos were involved in 211,650 collisions last year, 700 percent more than the 26,833 crashes involving Scorpios, the safest drivers on the zodiac calendar.

Had this just been a mundane study, wherein a reputable insurance company wanted to waste some money to appease the "new age" audience with some unsubstantiated and unproven statistics, that would be one thing.  Had this been a "joke" (damage control), because car insurance companies apparently like to waste money on humor, that would be another as well, but according to other sources, that's not the case.  In fact, according to Allstate's own current policies, that's not the case.  Insurance companies already use matters such as a person's credit, a person's sex, and even a person's personal life to measure the accountability and habits of a person, and the amount they should be paying for insurance. 

A person's sex and credit score have as much to do with their driving habits as their astrological sign.  Both of these matters were determined by statistics, which mean absolutely nothing in the face of reality.  First thing, statistics do not necessarily suggest correlation, and do not ever stand as evidence for causation.  One could find a hundred statistics by a hundred firms to suggest women are better drivers than men, just as one could find a hundred statistics by a hundred firms to suggest exactly the contrary.  It's all a matter of the methodology, which in matters of the business world, not the scientific one, is determined by the preordained result.  In fact, let me show you how easy it is to create a false statistic.  I'll use one of my favorite statistics, which is from the infamous Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which concludes that global warming is a direct result of the decline in piracy over the course of the last 400 years.

As anyone could tell you, temperatures - though you should never equate climate with weather as they are different things - in 1600 were a yearly average of about 54 degrees F.  In 1998, this number climbed to 58.3 degrees F.  Well, on the other hand, let's look at piracy.  Though, piracy is on the rise in recent years, it's too early to make any kind of climactic difference, says my research that I will come up with eventually to fit my conclusions.  According to generally accepted theory, the amount of pirates that rode the high seas in 1600 was close to 7,000 people.  That's quite a hefty number, especially when compared to 1998's depressing number of only 120.  Well, let us do some pretty simple math here.  From this research, I can easily conclude that there is a correlation, and I will arbitrarily conclude causation.  And with that, I will conclude that each pirate in the world is worth exactly 0.000625 of a degree.  I would also conclude that, judging by the math there, the world can only actually get 0.075 of a degree warmer, as that would be the increase in temperature caused by the remaining 120 sea-going swashbucklers giving up their day jobs, putting us at an average yearly temperature of 58.375 degrees F.  Wow, I guess I just proved that the polar ice caps are safe from heating as well.  I wonder why they're still melting then.  Well, they must not be, since I just proved with STATISTICS that they're not.

I hope I made my point about statistics.  So, now that we've proven that statistics, in the world of science, for the most part mean absolutely nothing, at least without proper and open methodology and proper double-blind scientific method.  Now, let's apply that thinking to the study I mentioned above regarding astrology.  Given that astrology applies to everyone, at least in the sense that everyone has had a sign applied to them by these hacks, we can conclude, beyond a shadow of a doubt that one of the twelve would come out on top of the others.  The chances of a tie happening are pretty small, so someone is going to take home the gold.  My question is this: Why only use Western astrology?  Why not apply Chinese astrology as well?  Is there more evidence for the tenets of Western astrology than Eastern astrology?  Well, let me check.  The following is a list of the empirical evidence collected over the course of the past 2,000 years, that suggests the tenets and claims made by either Western or Eastern astrology are viable and should be taken seriously:

(Insert cricket noises here)

Well, that's it.  Quite a bit, huh?  So, I guess to this day nobody has managed to prove that the date you were born and the position of the stars above your head or below your feet (on the other side of the world for you anti-heliocentrics out there) has any affect on your life, personality, love-life, future, family life, or driving habits.  In fact, in the long history of astrology, not one person, even those attempting with all of their might to prove this superstition as a legitimate science, has managed to produce anything.  Well, in the scientific world, one would have to say that after thousands of years with no evidence, and all of the actual evidence being completely to the contrary of astrology, it really ought to go the same route as Geocentricity, Craniometry, Phrenology, or any other pseudoscience or pseudo-hypothesis that has been practiced in the last few thousand years of recorded human history.  Why has it not?

Well, why haven't any of the religious tenets that have since been entirely unproven?  Why haven't any of the religious tenets that have been disproved through miles of evidence, such as the flood of Noah, the life-spans of biblical characters, the biblical age of the earth, the six-day creation, the Hindu world/elephant/tortoise hypothesis?  Well, because these are all religious factors, and no matter how absurd they are, you just cannot criticize them to the level at which they should be criticized, and thus, without opposition in the PC era, they just slowly absolve themselves of any responsibility to stand on evidence, and become part of the public's perception of reality.  Granted, reality exists independently of the observer, but that hardly makes a difference when people can't separate reality from observed reality, because they've not been taught the importance of critical thinking.

How many people wake up in the morning, get the paper, and read their horoscopes?  Quite a few, as the field seems to employ a ton of writers.  How many people believe them?  Far too many.  The problem is - let's say a person's horoscope says not the leave the house or they'll be killed - after a person does what their horoscope says and stays in their home, and nothing bad happens to them, you can't go back in time and prove to them that nothing bad would have happened anyway.  In fact, this may be a trivial matter, but what if something really good would have happened to them that day?  You must think that at least one of the thousands who read the horoscope that morning would have had a much better day had they gone outside.  What if one of them were on their last leg at their job and called in because their horoscope told them to?  Unlikely, yes, but still a matter to think about.  If even one bad thing has ever happened to a person, or one good thing has ever missed a person because of the directions inside of an instructive horoscope, that person has been robbed by pseudo-scientific superstition that has not one leg to stand on in the spectrum of evidence.  It is no different from those who succumbed to muscle problems later in life because of years of seeing a whole other field of charlatan, the chiropractor, who I will certainly touch on in a later blog.

My point in the end is that there is no evidence to show that astrology has any merit at all, and to charge extra money based on a religious chart is nothing more than religious discrimination.  I am a Scorpio.  I share a few of the traits outlined in my vague and common astrological description.  I share a few traits with the predictions made in my birth chart as well - yes, I had one made.  So do most people.  The issue is this: if it were a viable science, then I would share all of the traits described in both my birth chart and my star chart.  All Scorpios would be exactly the same, and every single person born on November 6, 1981 at 4:21 AM (my birthday) would have the same exact same life and personality, according to astrology.  Well, it just so happens an old friend of mine shared my birthday.  An old girlfriend, actually, who was only off by a few hours.  Well, you don't have to educate me in matters of astrophysics, I know how fast planets move, and I know how fast the earth spins as well, making it appear that stars are moving.  But in the world of astrology, apparently, this doesn't make much of a difference.  I wonder, then, why that woman and I had nothing in common, and don't talk today.  You'd think we'd make great bedfellows.

This brings me to another point.  Astrology claims to be the only algorithm necessary for bringing couples together.  Why, then, according to astrologydetails.com am I not only with a woman of an astrological sign that I'm supposed to hate (I'm in an extremely happy relationship, by the way) but according to the same site, the success of your marriage entirely depends of astrology?  I found this note quite interesting:

The type and location of the best wedding couples in astrology and reception site, officiate and other service personnel are also influenced by the residence of the daily Astrological Sun. The brides and grooms Natal Sun signs may also be used. Although the sign that the Sun resides in on the wedding day is the most significant, the other signs play their role in assisting with the preparations. Each will have some influence in the areas that they govern. Using the energies of the Astrological Bridal Zodiac can result in the bridal couples quest to plan a unique fairy tale best wedding couples in astrology.

I guess your overall algorithm is based in the position of planets on the date of your birth, but the basis of a successful marriage is not communication, compatibility, happiness, sex, or anything else that we crazy scientists have thought for hundreds of years.  Apparently, invisible and undetectable energies must travel through just the right places and just the right times, with the assistance of the sun, you know, the giant burning hydrogen ball in the sky with a mass of about about 2×10³⁰ kilograms that provides us all of our world sustenance by continuing to be a giant burning ball of gas, cares about your wedding, and even dictates your future.  Are you getting chills yet?  Because I am!  What is the evidence to support this?  NOTHING!  In fact, no link has ever been made between the time of day, nor the time of year, of a wedding ceremony that showed the success of the marriage is contingent on that whatsoever.  In fact, considering that marriages fail all the time, from weddings performed at all times of day and times of year, would certainly point to the contrary: There is no correlation at all.  I won't even get into the other signs "assisting with the preparations" part.  We'll leave that for Silvia Brown to try to explain in one of her monthly, ghost-written books.

In the end, I would have to say that this study was a wash, and the statistics mean nothing.  Whether it was a misguided appeasement of the "spiritual" crowd, or a "joke," is completely irrelevant.  And as I've shown, the statistics in this astrology exercise have exactly the same amount of merit as the statistics that increase a male's car insurance over a woman's car insurance.  They mean nothing.  At least no more than would statistics that would figure out a relationship between the time of day a person usually eats dinner, and the likelihood of that person being murdered, raped, raped again, then thrown into a burning pit of fire, ash, and ancient crystals that, together, would form a mythical symbol that would call upon the giant Cthulhu to drive the world into permanent insanity.  You know, on the other hand, I'd kind of like to read that study.  I'll mail it to Allstate so that they can use it to determine life insurance rates.

Thanks for reading,

C. Allen Thompson

The Smiling Skeptic