Snake Oil Salesmen

When I was a boy somebody once told me, “Don’t believe anything you hear and half of what you see.”  This advice stuck with me.  Later in childhood I became a great Houdini fan. I was amazed not only of tales of his escapes, but of his passion for exposing spirits mediums for what they were…fakes.   I feel that same passion for exposing medical quackery and fraud.    I have confronted many snake oil salesmen in open forums pushing magnets, power bracelets, or foot toxin absorbers. (All of these are a complete waste of money.)  When questioned all of these upstanding citizen will swear that their product is 100% proven effective.  When pressed really, really hard for scientific evidence, some will fall back to the stance that the scientific community will not publish real results because it would threaten them.  I have had a couple of “sales professionals” admit that they were selling placebos, but that was a good thing.  The ethics of that practice is a whole different subject.

Lately I have been more interested not in why unscrupulous people sell worthless products, but why people buy them.  There are two ways to think about this.  Why do some people believe these unbelievable marketing claims by the marketer?  But the other approach to this is why people dismiss scientifically accepted information.  Now the easy explanation is that people are just gullible.  I have to admit that I have tricked a few people to look up gullible in the dictionary.

I would like to know what you think about this subject.  Tweet me @DrHigginbotham