I got the power! Power Bracelets... Yeah right.

[Krazyskooter]

Had a woman walk into my sporting good store today wanting me to buy her "Power Bracelets" for retail. Supposedly, If you wear one on you wrist it will improve your balance, help your circulation, and make you think positive thoughts....or some steaming pile of bullshit. I've noticed everyone around here wearing them, and they are paying around 25 dollars a bracelet, I ask her to wait a moment while I checked into it online, and had her watch as I pulled up website after website calling it a scam. She eventually got the Idea, and tried convincing me that even if it didn't work everyone around here was wanting them (Which is true) but hell, no sense in taking advantage of the gullible. Anyone else heard of it?

 

[Gnug215]

Had a woman walk into my sporting good store today wanting me to buy her "Power Bracelets" for retail. Supposedly, If you wear one on you wrist it will improve your balance, help your circulation, and make you think positive thoughts....or some steaming pile of bullshit. I've noticed everyone around here wearing them, and they are paying around 25 dollars a bracelet, I ask her to wait a moment while I checked into it online, and had her watch as I pulled up website after website calling it a scam. She eventually got the Idea, and tried convincing me that even if it didn't work everyone around here was wanting them (Which is true) but hell, no sense in taking advantage of the gullible. Anyone else heard of it?

You know... someone should make a bracelet out of dried pieces of male bovine excrement, and call them magical.

And presto! Wearable bullshit!

I'd buy that.

 

[Arcterus]

I haven't heard of them, but that's hilarious.

How does someone go asking where they can find a bracelet that magically improves your circulation, balance, etc with a straight face?

 

[Krazyskooter]

Had a woman walk into my sporting good store today wanting me to buy her "Power Bracelets" for retail. Supposedly, If you wear one on you wrist it will improve your balance, help your circulation, and make you think positive thoughts....or some steaming pile of bullshit. I've noticed everyone around here wearing them, and they are paying around 25 dollars a bracelet, I ask her to wait a moment while I checked into it online, and had her watch as I pulled up website after website calling it a scam. She eventually got the Idea, and tried convincing me that even if it didn't work everyone around here was wanting them (Which is true) but hell, no sense in taking advantage of the gullible. Anyone else heard of it?

You know... someone should make a bracelet out of dried pieces of male bovine excrement, and call them magical.

And presto! Wearable bullshit!

I'd buy that.

LMAO, I just posted on my FB an hour ago telling people I had some magic petrified poo for them to sniff if they believed all that!

 

[Tylzen]

I have only seen these kind of claims with crystals.
When I lived at my parent's our neighbour briefly had a crystal healing "clinic", where she would swing a crystal over people to heal them.
Worst part in my opinion, was that she was a trained nurse.

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Oh there's all sorts of stuff about power balance bracelets around. They're really popular with sportsmen sadly. The Aussie skeptics especially have been all over them and they just won a "Shonky" award from an Australian consumer group for being a massive con.

They use tricks from other bullshit like "Applied Kinesiology" to sell it.



Explained here:



You can even buy parody "Placebo Bands"! :lol:

 

[Tylzen]

Thank you Funny Uncle, I got a new trick I can impress gullible theists with, and then debunk for them.

 

[Finger]

There's this thing calld the Phiten which is essentially the same thing, but with the awesome power of titanium!

http://www.phitenusa.com/

The Phild Processed material regulates the body's energy flow by stablizing ions. Injury, fatigue, and low oxygen levels hurt the efficiency of your cells, disrupting the normal flow of energy in your system. This increases the tension and fatigue in your body as it tries to compensate for the lost energy. Phiten products stabilize the energy, permitting a greater flow of energy with less waste. Fatigue sets in later and recovery time is shortened.

If you're paying attention to this year's World Series, you'll notice that about half the players are wearing one. *sigh* I guess since they can't use performance enhancers that work, they figured they'd switch to ones that don't.

 

[Logic-Nanaki]

While attending LS (a national rifle competition here in Norway) I walked by a stall that seemingly offered massage and general relief of stress and such goodies that can be a nice thing to buy when doing such a sporting event.

but i noticed something that they sold there. and sure enough. Power Bracelets. it actually did not say that it was, but it said all the BS about energy and circulation and such other sports-improvement.

I just looked in the basket, smirked, and laughed while walking away.
but I was also thinking about how many of those they might have sold there. letting the customers think that they might improve their shooting by wearing this piece of crap.

But hey. it seems to become my new source of BS since it's getting a bigger and bigger event, and following the new trend of alternative crap.

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

I thought the Dutch football team also wore those. Shame it didn't help against the match against Spain. A dutch newspaper, I think it was the Telegraaf who did an expose on them by confronting them at a health convention or something. Instead of explaining the science around it what you would expect if it really worked, all the film crew got was "Go away, you are not supposed to be here. You are violating my rights not to be filmed by filming me." The same BS you get when someone tries to stick up for those being duped and confront those responsible.

 

[lrkun]

It's worth testing. If a certain thing reminds a person of what's important in life, maybe this power bracelet will be useful. (placebo?)

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

It's worth testing. If a certain thing reminds a person of what's important in life, maybe this power bracelet will be useful. (placebo?)

The Australian consumer group I mentioned earlier did a double blind test on them, including some with no band, some with bands with the "magic" hologram removed, and some bands as sold. They found no significant difference in athletic performance. As to the placebo effect, of course that will come into play for those who believe it to work, but $60 for a rubber placebo? Sounds a bit steep when the parody versions are going for $2 each.

 

[lrkun]

It's worth testing. If a certain thing reminds a person of what's important in life, maybe this power bracelet will be useful. (placebo?)

The Australian consumer group I mentioned earlier did a double blind test on them, including some with no band, some with bands with the "magic" hologram removed, and some bands as sold. They found no significant difference in athletic performance. As to the placebo effect, of course that will come into play for those who believe it to work, but $60 for a rubber placebo? Sounds a bit steep when the parody versions are going for $2 each.

How many tests did they do?

In the side of business. If there is a market for this sort of thing. There will be people willing to sell and those willing to buy. The question is, what can you do about it.

 

[Shaedys]

If you're paying attention to this year's World Series, you'll notice that about half the players are wearing one. *sigh* I guess since they can't use performance enhancers that work, they figured they'd switch to ones that don't.

They could also be paid for advertisement. Though no doubt some would buy it for the effect.

And also, a placebo effect for a bracelet costing 60$ or one that costs 2$ would be different.

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

In the side of business. If there is a market for this sort of thing. There will be people willing to sell and those willing to buy. The question is, what can you do about it.

What you can do is what the Australian skeptics did: Test them and then flag them up as bullshit. If people want to buy them afterwards, it's their money.

Companies like this give science a bad name by trying to sell their products using scientific-sounding terminology that has no basis in reality. It's only right that they should be called out on this.

 

[Squawk]

Mate of mine bought one of these then did his best to get me to buy one too. I couldn't stop laughing.

 

[Laurens]

I am going to get a load of sugar pills and sell them as a magic supplement that can raise intelligence and cure stupidity...

Then chuckle to myself at the queues of incurably stupid people turning up to buy it...

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Oh look, another study shows that they don't work beyond placebo. What a shock.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-11805616

 

[borrofburi]

I have only seen these kind of claims with crystals.
When I lived at my parent's our neighbour briefly had a crystal healing "clinic", where she would swing a crystal over people to heal them.
Worst part in my opinion, was that she was a trained nurse.

Nurses seem to fall for a lot of woo... It's part of why I don't tend to trust nurses (much to the chagrin of many people in my life who automatically get angry because they assume I'm questioning the intelligence or competency of the nurse these various someones are related to) (though for that matter I don't completely trust doctors, just more than nurses).

I think it's because they're not really trained in the scientific method? They're just told "here's what we know about the human body" and not why we know it and the proper methodology required to create that knowledge from scratch? Maybe they aren't even taught that, maybe it's "here's how to apply these medical treatments, and here's why those medical treatments work"? Maybe they are taught the scientific method... Maybe they're just more prone than medical doctors (who have had it drilled into them for many years) to deal with the cognitive dissonance?

I'm inclined to think the former: we don't teach or require nurses to care too much about scientific methodology, and mostly we tell them "here's how to do X with humans, it works because of Y"; since that's mostly what they're used to hearing, it makes them prone to "here's how to do crystal healing with humans, it works because the vibrations of crystals fix the vibrations of humans"...

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Yeah... I guess you could make some kind of analogy to a tech company where medical researchers are the R&D team, doctors are the factory managers and nurses are the work-force making the products. The lower down the chain you go, the less you need to understand about how the products work in order to be able to do your job...