Messin with sasquatch
I’m of mixed feelings about There Goes the Science Bit…, the stab at consumer product debunking from the UK’s Voice of Young Science. On the one hand, it’s always nice to see institutional support for challenges to advertising and PR. American professional associations interested in promoting public intellectualism could also take a page from this group’s advice regarding the media. It’s a good start.*
On the other hand, the endeavor has a rushed, Michael Moore, low-hanging fruit feel to it. What they did was mostly just… call customer service and ask questions. (”Aha! I’ve vexed and confounded the receptionist! Suck it, Philip Morris!”) Yes, the poor bastard on the other end of the line is probably just an $8 an hour phone operator reading from a 2-page handout. Yes, anything with “herbal”, “homeopathic”, or “energy field” in the name or description is going to be useless crap. Flawless victory.
More proactive, public critiques will surely follow, one hopes. Being ready and able to call bullshit when asked is most excellent. Vigorously challenging marketers who dress up their products in speculative or concocted science claims would be better still.
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* (Despite the suspicious preponderance of rather attractive young men and women. Look at the photos in the PDFs. It’s like a hard science reality show in there. Yowza.)
Thanks for the comments on There Goes the Science bit! However, I wanted to address one point you raised – the subject of who we spoke to within the organisation. I think it’s a little unfair to claim that we simply hounded company receptionists – in all cases we endeavoured to speak to someone who answer our questions. For example, we spoke to Clarins’ head of R&D, Lionel di Benetti, Pret A Manger’s Commercial Director, Simon Hargreaves, Victor Sims, the Director of World Development Systems and inventor of Computer Clear, Ski Yoghurt’s in-house nutritionist, and poor Jennifer Lardge went from shop owner to distribution company to mine owner in a search for someone who could speak authoritatively on salt lamps.
If we’d simply phoned receptionists the document would have come across as a group of pernicious science graduates sneering at clueless reps, and that’s something we took great care to avoid.
Still, it’s very flattering to be flagged as “attractive young men and women” – contrary to popular belief, there are quite a few of these in science!
Regards, Frank, SAS
Comment by Frank — 27 Nov 2007 @ 5:53 am