Multi-level marketing: still a scam
Our old friend Dear Prudence (a.k.a. Emily Yoffe) has some wise words this week for someone looking for marketing advice. (It’s the last letter on that linked page.)
Dear Prudie,
I have a marketing problem. It seems that since the economy has taken a downward slide, many of my friends and customers have turned to enthusiastically selling multilevel marketing products. I find that I am getting pitched every time we meet for lunch, go shopping, or have a cocktail. I have been presented with energy drinks, vitamins, phone services, and travel companies, to name a few. I have also been told by some of my customers that if I don’t support them in their new business venture, I can plan on not getting any future business from them. I believe these people are being taken advantage of and their excitement is only temporary, as they are riding the high of what was promised to them for potential earnings. How can I tell my friends and customers that I do not support multilevel marketing schemes and I don’t want to hear about their newest business opportunity?—Please Stop the MLM Madness
Multi-level marketing schemes are ones where you get recruited to sell a product — it could be something specific, like Herbalife which sells vitamins and herbal “supplements,” or a virtual smorgasbord of different things, like Amway/Quixtar. This is presented as a great opportunity because you can “be your own boss,” and the like. Not only are you a salesperson for this business, earning commissions on your sales, but the person who recruited you gets commissions on your sales. And the person who recruited that person gets commissions on the sales of the people they personally recruited, and all of those people’s recruits (including you). And so on. If you recruit people, they’re sure to recruit others, who will recruit still more, and you too can make a fortune! So goes the claim.
Of course, it’s nonsense. Not only is it impractical — because the products are typically overpriced and are easily beaten in value by something your potential customers would find at the mall before they call you up about it — it’s also nonsensical. It’s different in a tiny technicality from a pyramid scheme (no commissions on recruitment, only on sale of products) but it’s doomed to fail for the same reason. There just aren’t enough people on the planet to sustain it in a way that’ll be profitable. Profitable for you, I mean. This whole thing is plenty profitable for the people that start these outfits, because they’re churning out these cheap silly products for you to buy for your inventory at marked-up rates (and then fail at selling to your friends and family at even more marked-up rates).
Bottom line: this is not a good idea. It may look good on paper, but it is ultimately a false promise. A tiny fraction of people participating in multi-level marketing turn a profit from sales, and an even tinier fraction of them quit their day job and make a fortune off it. The economy has been hard enough on everyone as it is. Don’t take it as an opportunity to throw even more of your money away. And remember that it’s not just yourself you’d be putting at risk, it’s the people you’ll be pressured to rope in with you, and in particular — as this letter reminds us — the friends and family you’ll be putting in a really difficult situation.
Anyhow, Prudie answers:
Dear Madness,
With your friends, you need to say you wish them the best, but like everyone else, you’re on a tight budget and simply can’t purchase these items from them. If they press you, say you’re being approached all the time, and you’ve just had to make a blanket decision in order to keep yourself from going broke. As for your clients, I’m assuming you actually provide a useful and necessary service to them. How nice that they want to exploit that to coerce you into buying useless and unnecessary products. It’s up to you to decide if a firm refusal is the best way to go, or if being more flexible would be better for you. If it’s the former, explain to them you understand how tough it is out there, but you hope to keep them as customers because they value what you offer, and that one way you keep your prices competitive is not going off your budget. If it’s the latter, you can consider buying their junk a cost of doing business. But before you sign up, explain that you are able to spend only a specific amount of money and will not go beyond that.—Prudie
I’m sorry that anyone might have to set aside a budget for playing along with a scam, but I agree with Prudence here that it might be the best thing for business if you can keep your involvement limited. Limits are really the key with this kind of stuff! Don’t let yourself get sucked in. For a lot more information about MLM, including hard numbers such as income statistics, and a bunch of citations, please take a look at Brian Dunning’s Skeptoid episode from last October. It’s great! You might also be interested in Russell Glasser’s site, The Perils of Amway, which has two epic personal accounts of individuals who were involved with Amway but found their ways out.
Older isn’t always better
The Washington Post has this really silly article about an on-again, off-again diet trend called the “Paleolithic diet.” It consists of eating “lots of lean meats, nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables; no grains, salt, sugar, legumes or dairy products.” Unsurprisingly, like most hip and fashionable diets, this is just an approximation of the tried-and-true but boring calorie-counting approach. They give the green light to fruits and veggies and lean meats, but cut out starches and added sugar — that sounds like a regular diet to me.
Of course, the “Paleolithic diet” has added appeal because it’s old. If traditional is good and ancient is better, why not go all the way to prehistoric?
[Fitness coach John] Main says at least half of his gym’s 80 or so members follow the diet pretty consistently, thanks to his convincing pitch that “this is how our human bodies have evolved to consume and process our nutrition” before the “onset of modern agriculture.” (“Modern agriculture” can sound like a disease in Paleo-speak.)
… [Colorado State professor Loren] Cordain writes that our Paleolithic ancestors were “lean, fit and free from heart disease and other ailments that plague Western countries.” Now, he adds: “Look at us. We’re a mess. We eat too much, we eat the wrong foods, and we’re fat.”
Any critical notions are constrained to one paragraph which begins, “Of course, there are skeptics.” Because you know how those skeptics are! Always being disagreeable, with their actual claims about human evolution and the human body’s ability to process various foods! As the reporter returns to Jennifer Jeremias, the star of the article, we read: “What’s important is that she’s never felt healthier.”
I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad diet. Like I said before, it sounds pretty much like normal calorie-counting with an added gimmick. However, it’s dangerous to endorse the idea that if humans did it a long time ago, it must be healthier than and generally superior to anything we do today. There are plenty of other so-called traditional or ancient health/medical practices that definitely result in harm, and even if this one is harmless, it teaches and normalizes an ideology that opens the door to danger.
What blows me away about the whole ancient=healthy idea is the fact that most of the people attracted to it have a great standard of living in the present, and they have no idea how bad things were long ago. Sure, people in the Paleolithic may have had a diet with the “proper balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fats,” but they didn’t have, for example, meat thermometers to make sure they never got sick from undercooking it. Pretty sure they also didn’t have refrigerators or freezers. We also have penicillin, vaccines, a deeper understanding of anatomy and genetics — heck, we have the germ theory of disease! I could go on and on. Modern life isn’t looking so unhealthy now, is it?
And let’s not get our facts muddled up, please. I agree that it’s unlikely that many people in the Paleolithic era died of type 2 diabetes or heart disease, but I’m pretty sure that has less to do with the precise details of their diet and more to do with the fact that the average life expectancy was 33.
The bottom line: there’s nothing wrong with a diet that’s high in valuable nutrients and low in calories, but there’s no reason to involve any pseudoscientific hype.
Michael Specter on the Charlie Rose Show
I’m watching Michael Specter, a science writer for the New Yorker, on the Charlie Rose Show right now. I’d never heard of this guy before but I adore him already. (I’m also admittedly not usually a fan of Charlie Rose, I suppose because I’ve fallen victim to the flashiness of modern media — I struggle to stay awake for his one-on-one interviews in front of a black screen for a full hour. The interviews are usually brilliant, though, and this is no exception.) The show’s bio of Specter says he’s just written a book called Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens our Lives. The interview and the book are about some of the same things he covers for the New Yorker: the current anti-vaccination chaos and its effects, misconceptions about organic food and genetically engineered crops, obsession with vitamins and supplements that don’t do any good … among other things. A few highlights that I managed to type before the moment passed by:
- Insightful line from Specter: “Science isn’t a company, it isn’t a country, it’s a method of doing something.” People often oppose scientific consensus and dispute the results of study after study because they claim that political and business interests shaped the results. To be sure, some funding-source bias may slip through occasionally, and a couple so-called “researchers” pop up from time to time who are outright sleazy. But to portray the entire institution of science as something so malleable, so easily lobbied and influenced, is to misunderstand deeply the concepts at the root of science.
- Explaining that eating locally grown, organic food is a nice goal but not a workable solution to the problems of starvation in the developing world, Specter emphasizes, “We’re not going to be serving everyone Swiss chard from the backyard. We’re just not.” The normally somber Charlie Rose starts giggling and says, “That’s true.”
You can watch the interview here once it goes online, probably later on Wednesday.
Happy Thanksgiving!
To my American readers, Happy Thanksgiving! (And to my Canadian readers, a very belated Happy Thanksgiving. To any who don’t fall into one of those categories… I don’t know, you can have some pie too. It’s delicious!)
I’m hoping to see more of you in the near future. I’ve got a couple posts queued up, and plan to write some more over my long weekend in order to get back on my blogging horse. Metaphorically.
For now, I’ll share with you this interesting tidbit posted at Space City Skeptics last Thanksgiving: there’s nothing about turkey that would make you sleepy when you eat it. The whole tryptophan thing is basically a myth. So, as they say, stop worrying and enjoy your turkey!
What’s the harm?
Like many, many others, I’m a big fan of the website F My Life (yes, the F stands for what you think it does, and no, it is not in general safe for work). In case you haven’t seen it: it’s a collection of short anecdotes describing humiliation, awkwardness, sadness, and other life unpleasantries. Sometimes, they’re hilarious, in a dark, “I’m glad that’s not me” sort of way. Sometimes, they help remind you that things in your life aren’t really so bad. Posts end with the letters “FML,” a kind of ritual exclamation, almost like an “Amen.”
Here’s one from today:
Today, my girlfriend of 3 years broke up with me because the love advice that she gets on her cellphone every week says that I’m cheating on her. I’ve never cheated on her and I was planning to propose next week. FML
A lot of the comments on that post express my basic sentiment to the poor guy: you’re better off without her, if she was dumb enough to believe those things. It doesn’t sound like it was generic love advice (like, “Communication is important!” kind of stuff) but instead that it claimed to be in some way tailored specifically to her. Maybe it was based on horoscopes, or it was from a psychic hotline type of service. Either way, the message is clear. What was seemingly an innocuous source of amusement for this woman drastically changed her life and the life of her boyfriend for the worse. He lost someone he loved, and she pushed away someone who genuinely loved her.
All too often, we see people using unproven, unscientific treatments or sources for life guidance and we think, “What’s the harm? If it makes them happy, isn’t that good enough?” As though consulting a psychic or getting acupuncture or taking homeopathic “medicine,” actions which are ineffective at achieving their stated goals, actually have no effect whatsoever. Of course that’s not true. Even sugar pills affect your health, even if it’s only by way of displacing the real medicine you should have been taking instead… to say nothing of the grave and direct consequences of many other “woo”-based practices.
Unconvinced? Take a look at What’s the Harm?, a website that catalogues the consequences of not exercising critical thinking skills. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, there are lots and lots of examples.
Time to talk
Orac’s post on the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM, part of the National Institutes of Health) reminded me of this card [PDF] made by them that I’ve been carrying around in my coat pocket for a while now. It says “Ask” and “Tell” in friendly orange speech bubbles, and it encourages me to speak to my health care provider about CAM treatments. I found it in my doctor’s office, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
On the one hand, this card tells me that NCCAM is “[my] source for reliable information about complimentary and alternative medicine.” Reliable is good. I checked out the website for the Time to Talk campaign, which these cards are a part of, and the point of it seems to be that patients should tell their doctors (and doctors should ask their patients) about any CAM treatments they may be pursuing on their own, so that doctors can advise patients about potential health concerns. The patient tip sheet says: “If you are considering a new CAM therapy, ask your health care providers about its safety, effectiveness, and possible interactions with medications (both prescription and nonprescription).”
On the other hand, CAM is still CAM. The best way I’ve ever heard to describe the crux of the issue: “You know what they call ‘alternative medicine’ that’s been proved to work? Medicine.” If NIH’s NCCAM is doing anything other than telling people to get as far away from CAM as possible, they’re doing a deplorable job of promoting public health. From the postcard and the Time to Talk site, it seems like they could be encouraging patients to find out about how pretend acupuncture has the same effects as real acupuncture, or about how homeopathy makes no sense whatsoever. However, as Orac’s breakdown of NCCAM grants makes clear, these are not their priorities. The vast majority of their grant funding is going either to things that shouldn’t be categorized as “alternative” (such as studies of the effects of particular diets on health) or — and this is the real issue — studies of therapies based on truly ridiculous ideas that shouldn’t be getting any credibility from a national research institute. For example: NCCAM funded a study to examine homeopathic succussion (vigorous shaking, claimed to make homeopathic treatments more effective; never mind that shaking doesn’t change the fact they are pure water) and to compare succussion to regular stirring, in order to “improve standardization of homeopathic remedy manufacturing and prescribing.” It’s terrifying to think that real money was spent on this so-called study, and others like it. Orac made the very apt comparison: “it’s like studying whether eye of newt or pixie dust is more efficacious in curing cancer.”
If NCCAM was there to provide an authoritative bank of data showing which supposedly alternative therapies were actually real medicine and which were “alternative” because they were pure garbage, that would be fine with me. I would be very excited about that, to be honest. Unfortunately, no matter how scientific the stated intentions of the center’s directors, they seem dead-set on promoting CAM rather than critically examining it.
Skeptics’ Circle #105: The Shakespeare Edition
Welcome to the 105th edition of the Skeptics’ Circle. It’s a privilege to be hosting such a fine carnival here at It’s the Thought that Counts. I hope you enjoy your stay at our humble blog.
In honor of the 105th edition, we’re going to take a look at William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 105. Although of course it’s actually about the beauty, gentleness, and loyalty of one’s beloved, I think we can give it a skeptical reading if we try hard enough. And with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, a love poem seemed appropriate. So let’s get right to it!
Let not my love be call’d idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
What better way to open a meeting of skeptics? Several submissions focused on questioning facts assumed to be unchallengeable. One blogger unwilling to engage in such idolatry of assumptions was Karl Haro von Mogel at Biofortified, who can’t find a kernel of truth to anti-GMO groups’ claims that President Obama promised to mandate labeling of genetically modified foods. In other biology idolatry news, Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog discussed the claim that 98% of the world’s seeds come from six companies. Is that a real fact, or is it a great example of Bellman’s Theorem?
Since all alike my songs and praises be
No problem — skepticism doesn’t have to be applied only to rare or outlandish things. Sometimes the everyday provides perfect opportunities to exercise one’s critical thinking skills. Marty, of Marty’s Place, wrote about the natural explanations for his apparent telekinetic and psychic powers over his refrigerator and car stereo. Meanwhile Matt, the Skeptical Teacher, explained how fortune cookies don’t know your fortune, even if they appear to help someone win the lottery on occasion — and how the same is true for psychics.
While we’re on the subject of psychics: Seth Manapio, of Whiskey Before Breakfast…The Blog reminded us that psychics are con artists, using false advertising to trick people into believing them. He argued that we shouldn’t blame a psychic’s customer for getting scammed, just as we shouldn’t blame a rape victim for getting raped.
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Some people think that if you hold a particular viewpoint, you’re never allowed to do anything that might reveal slight complicity in anything perceived by anyone as contradictory. TechSkeptic, of Effort Sisyphus, found an article on Fox News criticizing environmentalists for ever using electricity, using manufactured items, or doing anything with any environmental cost. TechSkeptic explained why, if we encouraged that attitude, we’d all be living without the convenience of indoor plumbing.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Love may be constant, but the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is not. The Socratic Gadfly described how the definition revisions that took place between the DSM-III and DSM-IV may have contributed to the increase in autism diagnoses.
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Yes, staying constant might be romantic, but it’s not always rational. Sometimes the difference is important, and shouldn’t be left out! It’s important to challenge our beliefs and see if a change is necessary. Barbara Drescher, at ICBS Everywhere, described her attempts to convince Frank Ferris to allow controlled tests to see if his dog Dave can really do math. Will she succeed? Stay tuned to her blog; there is some hope. TechSkeptic also gave us a great post on the challenge paradigm and its many manifestations. Check it out to see who’s doing it right, and who just doesn’t get it.
‘Fair, kind and true’ is all my argument,
‘Fair, kind, and true’ varying to other words;
Fairness, kindness, and truthfulness are certainly things we skeptics can get behind. (Heck, we’re even respectful while we’re insolent.) The emphasis is on that third one, though, so let’s take the time now to discuss evidence and how to examine it to find truth. Greta Christina, at her eponymous blog, asked if theists are really being intellectually honest when they say that the question of the existence of God(s) deserves “further exploration.” She argues that their version of exploration seems to involve a lot more omphaloskepsis than evidence-gathering. Over at Skeptimedia, Bob Carroll (of The Skeptic’s Dictionary fame) explained the importance of evaluating evidence. The class he used to teach on this topic sounds really interesting. Matt, the Skeptical Teacher, found some people who seem like they could use a lesson from Bob. He bravely delves into the strange and baseless claims made by conspiracy theorists worried about the Hudson River plane landing.
And in this change is my invention spent,
Okay, this is getting tricky, but I’m going to use the word “invention” to transition into publication of scientific research. Please imagine that that was graceful. Andrew of The Evolving Mind brought us the happy news of a paper published that gives a null result which may surprise you. Finding no relationship between variables is worth noting! I wrote about how papers posted on the freely available arXiv database do not necessarily contain reliable science, so they should be approached with caution. Blake Stacey, at Science after Sunclipse, shared a similar sentiment as well as a great example of some “alternative” genetic research he found there.
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Skeptics know well that when you combine seemingly unrelated things into one new thing (think: quantum harpsichord bubble bath, sounds so curative!) you can make miracles… or at least a lot of money off the uninformed. Bing McGhandi, at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes, used this philosophy to bring us chapter 1 of his Feng Shui Diet book, all about preventative feng shui. So convincing, it’ll make you wonder why no one’s tried to sell this before. Over at Ionian Enchantment, Michael Meadon showed us a story that was all too real: a Reuters piece on what feng shui masters have to say about finances in the coming year.
‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often lived alone,
Which three till now never kept seat in one.
As Shakespeare closes, so will we, with Kylie’s review of the show “Lie to Me,” at Podblack Cat. She wrote, “They don’t seem to be short-changing the science” of lie detection, and she says it’s also pretty interesting and entertaining. Three for one; I may start watching the show myself!
That’s it for this time around. Join us for the next Skeptics’ Circle on February 26th, to be hosted by Disillusioned Words.
Reminder: Skeptics’ Circle
Don’t forget: if you’re planning to submit a post to the Skeptics’ Circle this time around, get it to me before midnight EST tonight. You can leave a comment here if you like, but the preferred method of submission is to email z [at] thoughtcounts [dot] net.
Skeptics’ Circle #104
Space City Skeptics has just posted the 104th edition of the Skeptics’ Circle. Those of us now in the swing of spring semester and perhaps coming up on our first set of exams may find it hauntingly familiar! (Sadly, I’m referring only to familiarity of the test theme, rather than the multiple choice format in particular…. Oh, how I miss those bygone days.) There’s plenty of interesting content there, but do make sure you check out the Perky Skeptic’s post about feeding trolls, and save some of that inspiration for next time you feel discouraged by the number of people who are wrong on the internet.
I’ll be hosting the next edition of the Skeptics’ Circle here on February 12, so please send me your submissions by the previous midnight (EST). Email them to z [at] thoughtcounts [dot] net.
Reading the arXiv
I’m a big fan of the arXiv.org database. (If you’ve never heard of it: pronounce it just like “archive.” Think the Greek letter chi, written like an X.) It contains papers from lots of fields in math and science. The arXiv makes research more accessible to researchers and laymen (laypeople?) in several ways. It’s difficult to get access to journal articles without a subscription, or a university library system with a subscription. Also, it takes time for articles to get printed, for purely logistical reasons, but people sometimes post their papers before publication. Lastly (in my list at least), a lot of research wouldn’t otherwise be published, but even things like null results add to the sum of our knowledge and are valuable to record, and the arXiv is a good a place to put them.
That being said, the arXiv is not a peer-reviewed journal, and should not be treated as such. Some articles have gone through review, but not all. Some papers are early drafts, and are still undergoing review. Some articles have questionable methods, or assume blatantly wrong premises. (We frequently encounter this phenomenon when presenting and discussing papers in “journal club.” I assume we are not the only ones noticing this.) You do need to be a registered author to submit a paper to the arXiv, and you’re not supposed to lie about who you are, but no one is there checking your work.
Daphne was just pointing out the ridiculously alarmist Fox News coverage of a new arXiv article about black holes at the LHC. She makes a lot of great (and funny!) points about their inaccurate and misleading interpretation of the article, and I don’t have anything to add there. What really got me about the story is that the Fox reporters based their entire story on a paper only published on the arXiv. I’m not questioning the researchers’ methods or conclusions — hep-ph is not my subfield, and besides, their claims are certainly not what is reported on Fox News’ site — but I am pretty sure that no one at Fox is qualified to question them either, which means that they shouldn’t take everything they find on arXiv at face value. It’d be like reading Wikipedia and then reporting that the European Union has announced a new policy that ALLY WUZ HERE!!1!
I want information to be freely available just as much as the next intellectual. However, we have to be cautious. The internet may be the great leveller, but that means it sometimes obscures the difference between good ideas and bad ones.