Disgusting scams that prey on your fears

The worst scams often target the most desperate people. Read more to help you make better buying decisions.

Earlier this month, there was a story on the BBC about a South Korean professor who's been charged with fraud. He claimed he could digitise the healing properties of Lourdes' holy water and radiate it onto regular water to cure such things as diabetes and cancer.

Your first reaction might be to laugh, but this is a disgusting scam targeting desperate people who'll try anything to get better. This scam not only costs money but it gives false hope. Even worse, it can stop people seeking effective treatments and even lead to death.

Peddling cures with no sound evidence they work is not new. Here are some more.

Homeopathy

Homeopathic remedies are sold as treatment for such things as malaria, cancer and asthma. Sense About Science neatly summarises the vast quantity of research into homeopathy here, showing that it works no better than a placebo.

Sense About Science writes that in most homeopathic remedies there isn't a single molecule left of the ingredient that is supposed to cure the patient, because they're watered down so much. It says that, at a standard homeopathic concentration of 30C, the chances of the preparation containing even a single molecule of the original active ingredient is lower than winning the national lottery five weeks in a row.

The homeopathy industry has now come up with a new argument. It claims water has a memory of the active ingredient. Extraordinary.

Ben Goldacre writes in his book, Bad Science: 'There have been over a hundred randomised placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy, and the time has come to stop.'

'Magic' pendants

Goldacre is a medical doctor with three degrees who's made a name for himself writing for the Guardian and his blog, Bad Science. He uses bad science to show the good science, showing time and again the need for quality evidence. He was sued by one of his targets recently, but the claimant dropped his case and must pay back £500,000 in defence costs.

Goldacre criticises alternative medicine and the pharmaceutical industry alike, but he also tears apart much shoddy health journalism, castigating a well-known health journalist who claimed water has calories, and writing whole chapters targeting individuals. So I better be especially careful what I write in this article.

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In his book he writes about a pendant that protects you from 'terrifying invisible electromagnetic rays that cures many ills', which is powered by the wearer. After breaking the pendant open with some other patrons at an annual festival for dorks (really – it's called Camp Dorkbot) he found a circuit board with no circuit. Through the clear plastic cover of the pendant is an impressive looking zero-ohm resistor, also connected to nothing. The resistor costs 0.5p and the pendant cost £70.

Goldacre writes that the inventor informed him the pendant doesn't use electronic components 'in a conventional electronic way'. The energy pattern reprogramming (energy from your own body, remember) is done by some finely powdered material embedded in the resin. He makes a good joke about this, but I won't spoil it in case you read the book.

Slimming pills

Another interesting piece on the BBC Health website yesterday was about the growing market in counterfeit slimming pills, with developed countries (we count as one of those, even if it doesn't always feel like it) being the main market, because so many of us have access to the internet and all the varied scams that can be easily sold through it.

According to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the problem is that these counterfeit pills have typically been greatly watered down, they're made with substandard equipment and contain impurities, and sometimes they use ingredients that are now banned due to health risks. What's more, many of the ingredients should be available on prescription only. There's more on this with some advice on how to buy safe medicines through the internet in the BBC article.

It pays to look into cures before you buy them. You could visit the Sense About Science website for some more information. If you want to take it to the next level, learn your way around the Cochrane Collaboration website. You can get a feel for the quality of the research they do if you look through just a few of the 25 or so papers they've done on the different uses of acupuncture.

I highly recommend the humorous and informative book Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, which looks critically at everything from big pharma, moisturising creams and nutritional supplements to individuals like Patrick Holford and Gillian McKeith.

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