Bad Science in Adverts

[SoX]

I was watching TV, as I usually do, and an advertisement for Lurpak (butter) came on. The gist of it was that this Lurpak butter is light and better for you. Anyway to demonstrate that this was "light" butter the woman drops a piece of buttered toast and it lands butter-side up, against the notion that buttered toast always lands butter-side down.

Now am I being stupid here or does this not make any sense? I thought that objects fall at the same rate no matter the mass, it's just the air resistance that slows them down (Penny and Feather in a vacuum experiment). So since butter usually spreads the same anyway, why would light butter affect the way a piece of toast falls any different to the way normal butter would unless it had special "air resisting" properties.

This also allows me to vent at that damn stupid Dove soap advert with the pH paper that doesnt change colour to show something is neutral... purple for alkali, red for acid, and GREEN FOR FRICKIN NEUTRAL! NOT ORANGE!

nice soap though.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

At first I thought this was a rant against the Killette March Three (distorted to avoid free advertising, but anyone with a brain will know exactly what I'm talking about) razor with its cute battery-powered 'micro-pulses' crap. I don't think it works at all, and the United States District Court (District of Connecticut) [WARNING! PEE DEE EFF!] agrees with me.

[genkkov]

There have actually been some serious (I suppose) studies done about this. Here's a link to one of these:

http://www.thiel.edu/academics/physics/ ... efault.htm

I think I also read something recently in Slate about this very topic, might want to refer back to there.

[genkkov]

sorry, didn't mean to submit that so quick...

It turns out the reason that toast tends to fall butter-side up, from what I've seen, is that toast has time to turn more than 91 but less than 180 degrees when falling from an average table height of 1.5 metres, thus landing on the side opposite than it started. Not a physicist, but I think that's the general idea.

[Hawkwings]

you mean buttered side *down*, right?

[genkkov]

Well, for those who butter their bread on the butter side up, of course.
I however butter my bread on the butter side down....

Yeah, I meant down. good call.

[Darth Wong]

That sounds like a pseudo-humourous ad. What really annoys me is meaningless pseudoscientific buzzwords, like "pro-vitamins" in shampoo commercials. What the fuck is a pro-vitamin? A vitamin that got tired of the amateur circuit and decided to go pro?

[fgalkin]

This is nothing compared to the blatant appeal to popularity fallacies in some of the ads. "Over 50,000 people ordered this diet, why haven't you!?" Because I'm not a brain-dead lemming, perhaps?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

How is it legal for commercials to completely make up terminology? Shouldn't they have to clarify, by law, what the hell the jargon means?

[SoX]

yeah the shampoo ads really get on my tits too. and most wrinkle curing ones too.

[tharkûn]

What really annoys me is meaningless pseudoscientific buzzwords, like "pro-vitamins" in shampoo commercials.

Umm those are real science, though the marketing is still crap. Pro vitamins are chemical substances which are readily converted into classical vitamins. For instance panthenol is an alcohol that is readily metabolized into pantothetic acid, otherwise known as vitamin B5.

The ability of panthenol to become a vitamin means absolutely nothing in terms of haircare. It is used a lubricant that readily takes up water and doesn't feel oily or greasy. Some marketing idiot somewhere thought correctly that saying "with pro vitamins" sounds much better than saying "with panthenol" and now everyone does it.

Pro vitamins are real science, beta-carotene is a provitamin which readily converts to vitamin A. The marketing is merely people misusing scientific buzzwords to sell overpriced hair goop.

[Darth Wong]

What really annoys me is meaningless pseudoscientific buzzwords, like "pro-vitamins" in shampoo commercials.

Umm those are real science, though the marketing is still crap. Pro vitamins are chemical substances which are readily converted into classical vitamins. For instance panthenol is an alcohol that is readily metabolized into pantothetic acid, otherwise known as vitamin B5.

The ability of panthenol to become a vitamin means absolutely nothing in terms of haircare. It is used a lubricant that readily takes up water and doesn't feel oily or greasy. Some marketing idiot somewhere thought correctly that saying "with pro vitamins" sounds much better than saying "with panthenol" and now everyone does it.

Pro vitamins are real science, beta-carotene is a provitamin which readily converts to vitamin A. The marketing is merely people misusing scientific buzzwords to sell overpriced hair goop.

Why aren't they called "vitamin precursors"?

[Molyneux]

What really annoys me is meaningless pseudoscientific buzzwords, like "pro-vitamins" in shampoo commercials.

Umm those are real science, though the marketing is still crap. Pro vitamins are chemical substances which are readily converted into classical vitamins. For instance panthenol is an alcohol that is readily metabolized into pantothetic acid, otherwise known as vitamin B5.

The ability of panthenol to become a vitamin means absolutely nothing in terms of haircare. It is used a lubricant that readily takes up water and doesn't feel oily or greasy. Some marketing idiot somewhere thought correctly that saying "with pro vitamins" sounds much better than saying "with panthenol" and now everyone does it.

Pro vitamins are real science, beta-carotene is a provitamin which readily converts to vitamin A. The marketing is merely people misusing scientific buzzwords to sell overpriced hair goop.

That reminds me...is it just me, or is the term "amino proteins" meaningless (since all proteins are made of amino acids)? My sister's conditioner has that on the bottle, and it's really been bugging me.

[TheDarkOne]

What really annoys me is meaningless pseudoscientific buzzwords, like "pro-vitamins" in shampoo commercials.

Umm those are real science, though the marketing is still crap. Pro vitamins are chemical substances which are readily converted into classical vitamins. For instance panthenol is an alcohol that is readily metabolized into pantothetic acid, otherwise known as vitamin B5.

The ability of panthenol to become a vitamin means absolutely nothing in terms of haircare. It is used a lubricant that readily takes up water and doesn't feel oily or greasy. Some marketing idiot somewhere thought correctly that saying "with pro vitamins" sounds much better than saying "with panthenol" and now everyone does it.

Pro vitamins are real science, beta-carotene is a provitamin which readily converts to vitamin A. The marketing is merely people misusing scientific buzzwords to sell overpriced hair goop.

Why aren't they called "vitamin precursors"?

pro-2
pref.

1.
a Earlier; before; prior to: procambium.
b Rudimentary: pronucleus.
2. Anterior; in front of: procephalic.

from dictionary.com

[wautd]

This also allows me to vent at that damn stupid Dove soap advert with the pH paper that doesnt change colour to show something is neutral... purple for alkali, red for acid, and GREEN FOR FRICKIN NEUTRAL! NOT ORANGE!

Not really. The acid-base indicator that turns green for neutral is commenly used but there are plenty of others around. There are a ton of indicators that are red in acid and yellow in base so being orange in neutral isnt that unlikely

For a marketing point of view, I would have picked green myself tough. Your average John Doe may know little about chemistry but people tend to make the link between Green = Good pretty quickly

[tharkûn]

Why aren't they called "vitamin precursors"?

These definitions should not be considered hard and fast, there still is a moderate amount of debate of what the hell a "vitamin" is (like 'vitamin' D) so further definitions are still a matter of convention and choice. Anyway:

1. Vitamin precursors: chemical substances that can be converted into vitamins.
2. Provitamins: Vitamin precursors that are readily converted to vitamins in the body.

My textbooks were of this school of thought that all provitamins were vitamin precursors, but not the converse. Most vitamin terminology is screwy being built backwards and with a really lousy choice of rules, this is being changed so that you are seeing more and more good chemical terminology with less 'old fashioned "biological" ' terminology. Slowly things are becoming standardized with the rest of chemistry and all the crap from the 1910's is finally dying a much deserved death, but it isn't there yet.

[kheegster]

I once saw a skin lotion advert that proclaimed that it could make skin 65% smoother. I wonder how they managed to quantify skin smoothness.

[Sriad]

I once saw a skin lotion advert that proclaimed that it could make skin 65% smoother. I wonder how they managed to quantify skin smoothness.

If I had to do it, I'd use a one square cm piece of plastic deformed to all available crags and crevices on your skin, measure the final surface area, and then compare that to one cm^2. If your skin goes from 2.00 to 1.35, it would be smoother by 65%. In that case, the beauty product used would probably be sandpaper.

(that's just the test I'd have made up, no clue how Lotion Huckers X do it)