As a kid, I loved going to the farmers’ market and county fair with my family. I was absolutely riveted by the slick pitchmen doing their spiels for kitchen knives, food choppers, juicers, magic tricks, etc., even though I never actually bought anything. Even at the age of 10, I understood that these items would not work as well for me as for those well-rehearsed hucksters. Today, we don’t need to leave home to be pitched- we can get plenty from network and cable TV, the internet, targeted mass mailings, and telemarketers.
In 2010, even if a person doesn’t know much, he probably has been exposed to the common adages of skepticism: “Caveat Emptor” (buyer beware), “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”, “If told jump off the bridge, would you?” and the maxim erroneously credited to P.T. Barnum, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. Exposure to these ideas, sadly, doesn’t necessarily mean that a person will embrace them.
There are many things that interfere with people’s judgment, causing them to buy lousy or useless products. Underdeveloped critical thinking skills, weak math skills, lack of appreciation for scientific evidence, wishful thinking, and naïve faith in those who have not demonstrated trustworthiness are but a few of them. The fascination that large numbers of people have with what are loosely termed “spiritual” phenomena (translation: must be accepted on faith because there isn’t a scintilla of scientific evidence), e.g. Psychics, Numerology, Reiki, Tarot Readings, Feng Shui and Astrology, is unsettling. Every time a person tells me that he or she is “a very spiritual person,” my instincts tell me that the person is at greater risk for suckerhood.
In graduate school, like almost every psychology grad student of my era (late 1960s-early 1970s), I learned about research methods and statistics, the placebo effect, and what my profession calls The Scientist-Practitioner Model. We became well-versed in the concept of therapies that claim to help people but are actually no more effective than placebo treatments. Many established psychotherapies have still not adequately passed the test of scientific scrutiny, and every passing decade has brought us new psychotherapies that couldn’t even pass the sniff test. Primal Scream Therapy, Nude Encounter Groups, Neurolinguistic Programming, Inner Child Work, Thought Field Therapy, Past Life Regression Therapy, and Repressed Memory Therapy are but a few examples. In psychology, we now have so many mass-production graduate programs that many of the graduates practice all kinds of nonsense. Either their training skipped the “scientist” part of the Scientist-Practitioner Model, or lower admissions standards have yielded less intellectually rigorous graduates, or both. It is with this point of view that I approach a much larger area of suckerhood in our society: health and nutritional supplements and products.
I’m still fascinated by the spiel of a pitchman, but just like when I was a kid, I still don’t buy the stuff. Some of my favorite health supplements and product pitches are for:
NATUREBEE- Just $99.95 for 360 bee pollen capsules “from clean, green New Zealand.” “Often referred to as nature’s most complete food,” the bee pollen in NATUREBEE, if taken every day will strengthen your immune system, make you more energetic, and rejuvenate your body. I’ve heard NATUREBEE ads on several AM talk radio stations, mostly during the most expensive drive-time when the hosts give personal testimonials for the product.
Prolixus- According to the manufacturer, studies show that this herbal supplement for men increases libido, improves sexual stamina and performance, heightens orgasms, and increases penis size. You just take 2 capsules per day at a cost of $76.99 per month. This amazing product is advertised on AM talk radio stations.
iRenew- For $19.99 you get a bracelet that contains the “iRenew Energy Balance System”. By wearing this bracelet, which is programmed with natural frequencies that your body is tuned to, you will enjoy more energy, better sleep, increased strength, greater flexibility, enhanced balance, and healthier blood. You can see the TV ads on ESPN and other cable stations.
The Flex Belt- As advertised on TV and the internet, for only $199.00, you get this abdominal toning system which claims to exercise your muscles with no effort on your part, thereby producing rock-hard abs in a matter of weeks. All you have to do is Velcro the belt around your abdomen and electrical stimulation causes your muscles to spasm rapidly, thereby toning them and giving you the "six-pack" that you've always envied. Endorsed by Football Hall of Fame great Jerry Rice, how could this product be anything but legitimate?
While the availability of scientific knowledge has advanced geometrically over the years, most people in the USA have avoided like the plague, courses and professions in the STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. We have become a society that is perfectly designed for the pitchmen, hucksters, and snake oil salesmen. There have always been faith healers and con artists, and this means that there have always been willing customers. But now, the health supplement industry does about $25 billion in sales in the USA every year. This is suggestive of a mass delusional phenomenon! Just turn on your TV at 3:00 AM and view the infomercials, or read some of your SPAM mail, or check out the ads in health and fitness magazines, or count the number of health supplement and vitamin shops that have sprung up in your community. Businesses don’t spend the megabucks needed to manufacture and promote their products unless they are getting a good return on their investments.
So, are the people who buy unproven health supplements and products sharing a delusion? To believe that one can easily improve one’s health, strength, sexual prowess, and appearance by simply buying relatively cheap, practically unregulated products, which are usually presented in cheesy ads, represents wishful thinking on the part of millions of Americans. The fact that they actually spend to the tune of $25 billion per year qualifies this phenomenon as a shared delusion of massive proportions.
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