<story><title>Defense of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop offers case study on how to sell snake oil</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/defense-of-gwyneth-paltrows-goop-offers-case-study-on-how-to-sell-snake-oil/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skrebbel</author><text>Over the last decade I&amp;#x27;ve been having increasingly bad hay fever. The doctor said &amp;quot;eat these pills&amp;quot;. They worked but they made me fall  asleep right at my desk.&lt;p&gt;This year my girlfriend put me on some decent snake oil indeed. Tens of euros worth of food supplements per month. I also went to see an acupuncturist. My problems aren&amp;#x27;t reduced, they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;gone&lt;/i&gt;. I can be outside for an entire day and not notice a thing. My problem is, 0% of what I did is evidence-based medicine.&lt;p&gt;Now, this is the whole issue with snake oil. Anecotes like mine don&amp;#x27;t further science. But the Ars article puts all of Goop&amp;#x27;s stuff on a single big pile of &amp;quot;snake oil&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t it possible that there are things that work, even though they have not been scientifically proven yet? Why can&amp;#x27;t there ever be a middle ground? I mean I also think homeopathy is a fraud. But I also know that either dried extract from Indian moringa trees or needles put into appropriate places in my body&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;energy streams&amp;quot;, or both combined, fixed all my problems. This is pretty major to me. I can live again.&lt;p&gt;In fact, I think there&amp;#x27;s an upside to non-evidence-based things selling more: maybe at some point the sellers will earn enough money to be able to finance decent clinical trials.&lt;p&gt;Many forms of irritable bowel syndrome (a disease defined by a list of symptoms, for which &amp;quot;there is no cure&amp;quot;) can be fixed simply by changing your diet. I know someone who had stomach aches every day for 10 years and went to once a month &lt;i&gt;simply by eating oatmeal every morning&lt;/i&gt;. Evidence based? No. I have no idea how you could ever design an affordable clinical trial for that, too many factors involed. The cost would be huge and the oatmeal industry doesn&amp;#x27;t have deep enough pockets.&lt;p&gt;I think that to dismiss everything that&amp;#x27;s not evidence based medicine as snake oil, like this article does, is just as bad as dismissing mainstream medicine like Goop appears to do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chasing</author><text>Imagine this scenario:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;My computer stopped working one day so I kicked it hard and it started working again! Maybe kicking computers works.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;And you, as a &amp;quot;computer person,&amp;quot; are like: &amp;quot;I can&amp;#x27;t say what happened in your specific case, but generally speaking kicking your computer will probably cause more harm than good. Maybe you caused it to restart or something or got lucky and something that was loose inside the machine got pushed into a tight fit. Or maybe it was a total coincidence. Who knows. But I&amp;#x27;m glad it&amp;#x27;s now working for you.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s probably what someone in the medical community thinks when they hear stuff like the above.&lt;p&gt;(And now here comes GoopTech offering to fix your computer by kicking it for $50&amp;#x2F;kick.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Defense of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop offers case study on how to sell snake oil</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/defense-of-gwyneth-paltrows-goop-offers-case-study-on-how-to-sell-snake-oil/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skrebbel</author><text>Over the last decade I&amp;#x27;ve been having increasingly bad hay fever. The doctor said &amp;quot;eat these pills&amp;quot;. They worked but they made me fall  asleep right at my desk.&lt;p&gt;This year my girlfriend put me on some decent snake oil indeed. Tens of euros worth of food supplements per month. I also went to see an acupuncturist. My problems aren&amp;#x27;t reduced, they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;gone&lt;/i&gt;. I can be outside for an entire day and not notice a thing. My problem is, 0% of what I did is evidence-based medicine.&lt;p&gt;Now, this is the whole issue with snake oil. Anecotes like mine don&amp;#x27;t further science. But the Ars article puts all of Goop&amp;#x27;s stuff on a single big pile of &amp;quot;snake oil&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t it possible that there are things that work, even though they have not been scientifically proven yet? Why can&amp;#x27;t there ever be a middle ground? I mean I also think homeopathy is a fraud. But I also know that either dried extract from Indian moringa trees or needles put into appropriate places in my body&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;energy streams&amp;quot;, or both combined, fixed all my problems. This is pretty major to me. I can live again.&lt;p&gt;In fact, I think there&amp;#x27;s an upside to non-evidence-based things selling more: maybe at some point the sellers will earn enough money to be able to finance decent clinical trials.&lt;p&gt;Many forms of irritable bowel syndrome (a disease defined by a list of symptoms, for which &amp;quot;there is no cure&amp;quot;) can be fixed simply by changing your diet. I know someone who had stomach aches every day for 10 years and went to once a month &lt;i&gt;simply by eating oatmeal every morning&lt;/i&gt;. Evidence based? No. I have no idea how you could ever design an affordable clinical trial for that, too many factors involed. The cost would be huge and the oatmeal industry doesn&amp;#x27;t have deep enough pockets.&lt;p&gt;I think that to dismiss everything that&amp;#x27;s not evidence based medicine as snake oil, like this article does, is just as bad as dismissing mainstream medicine like Goop appears to do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>coldtea</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;This year my girlfriend put me on some decent snake oil indeed. Tens of euros worth of food supplements per month. I also went to see an acupuncturist. My problems aren&amp;#x27;t reduced, they&amp;#x27;re gone. I can be outside for an entire day and not notice a thing. My problem is, 0% of what I did is evidence-based medicine.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;For one, your issues could have healed by themselves, even without it, just through time passing. Since there&amp;#x27;s a sample of 1 of you, and you did take those drugs, we don&amp;#x27;t have a control group, and can&amp;#x27;t know.&lt;p&gt;Second, those food supplements make have actually had some good stuff -- like a vitamin you&amp;#x27;re deficient in -- that helped in this case.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, there&amp;#x27;s always the placebo effect.&lt;p&gt;None of the above are an argument against the Goop stuff being snake-oil (and neither is &amp;quot;but it worked for me&amp;quot; for some Goop product).</text></comment>