Princeton Consumer Research

[Gary C]

When believers say "scientists can be bought" these are the people they should be referring too.

From truthinadvertising.org

"Whatever your product does, we can provide the appropriate clinical efficacy trials to make your claims a fact by proving their legitimacy," Princeton Consumer Research, a self-proclaimed global leader in the product testing industry that isn't affiliated with the Ivy League school, promises companies on its website."

Source - https://truthinadvertising.org/articles/princeton-consumer-research/

Full Disclosure: I donate regularly to truthinadvertising.org

 

[yoshy]

I basically always ignore "Clinically tested!" whenever I see it in an ad. I just automatically assumed it's set either made up or rigged like you show here. I'm not the type to quickly jump to "the government should heavily regulate or ban this", but I would likely support it in this case.

Thanks for posting this!

 

[deirdre]

or rigged like you show here.

how did he show it is rigged? I'm not sure positive wording in adverts means the company is rigging any actual results.

Personally, without clicking Gary's link, i think all they are promising is the "appropriate clinical trials". I dont really read that as 'we promise to fudge results for you'. If anything it reads to me like "if your claim fails we'll help you find different words to claim that would be true".

ex: "Based on our test you cannot say 'fine lines will be greatly reduced after 3 weeks' but you can say 'some women showed improvements in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles after 3 weeks'" <that last one would be true even if you rubbed mayonnaise on your face twice a day consistently for 3 weeks.

 

[yoshy]

how did he show it is rigged? I'm not sure positive wording in adverts means the company is rigging any actual results.

Personally, without clicking Gary's link, i think all they are promising is the "appropriate clinical trials". I dont really read that as 'we promise to fudge results for you'. If anything it reads to me like "if your claim fails we'll help you find different words to claim that would be true".

ex: "Based on our test you cannot say 'fine lines will be greatly reduced after 3 weeks' but you can say 'some women showed improvements in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles after 3 weeks'" <that last one would be true even if you rubbed mayonnaise on your face twice a day consistently for 3 weeks.

Fair enough. The quote promises to "make your claims a fact" for "whatever your product does".

"Whatever your product does, we can provide the appropriate clinical efficacy trials to make your claims a fact by proving their legitimacy,"

I interpreted that as they can fudge the numbers, p hack, use terrible study design, etc to make any claim look good. What if my product is a perpetual motion machine? Can they make that look legit?

But I could be reading too much into it.

If anything it reads to me like "if your claim fails we'll help you find different words to claim that would be true".

But that's bad too! It's equivalent to p-hacking that I've been writing about. It's unethical to go fishing for other claims when the original goal of your study fails.

 

[Gary C]

Also note they use NDAs primarily to prevent transparency about the quality and rigor of any studies they conduct. You can't replicate the results if you don't have access to the data.

Their formula is "We own a clinic" + "We studied it" = "It has been clinically studied" which is not how the term of art "clinical" is used in the medical research community.

 

[yoshy]

Also note they use NDAs primarily to prevent transparency about the quality and rigor of any studies they conduct. You can't replicate the results if you don't have access to the data.

Their formula is "We own a clinic" + "We studied it" = "It has been clinically studied" which is not how the term of art "clinical" is used in the medical research community.

A good first step of regulation that wouldn't be onerous would be requiring transparency for the study design and data. (Deidentified of course)

 

[FatPhil]

Also note they use NDAs primarily to prevent transparency about the quality and rigor of any studies they conduct. You can't replicate the results if you don't have access to the data.

Their formula is "We own a clinic" + "We studied it" = "It has been clinically studied" which is not how the term of art "clinical" is used in the medical research community.

Historically, we have sometimes had to work on marketting materials, in particular in the cosmetics realm, and claims of positive effects are sometimes so incredibly weak that whilst they might superficially look good, they say almost nothing - "70% of users in a 3-week trial reported that they thought their skin looked smoother and more vibrant" - which could equally apply to mayo, as deirdre notes. (And looking at the image link in the #1, I ain't sure that's not mayo.)

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

how did he show it is rigged? I'm not sure positive wording in adverts means the company is rigging any actual results.

Personally, without clicking Gary's link, i think all they are promising is the "appropriate clinical trials". I dont really read that as 'we promise to fudge results for you'. If anything it reads to me like "if your claim fails we'll help you find different words to claim that would be true".

ex: "Based on our test you cannot say 'fine lines will be greatly reduced after 3 weeks' but you can say 'some women showed improvements in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles after 3 weeks'" <that last one would be true even if you rubbed mayonnaise on your face twice a day consistently for 3 weeks.

I think this is a good take but quoting FatPhil below and my point under it since I think he frames it well.

Historically, we have sometimes had to work on marketting materials, in particular in the cosmetics realm, and claims of positive effects are sometimes so incredibly weak that whilst they might superficially look good, they say almost nothing - "70% of users in a 3-week trial reported that they thought their skin looked smoother and more vibrant" - which could equally apply to mayo, as deirdre notes. (And looking at the image link in the #1, I ain't sure that's not mayo.)

This is pretty much what a lot of those do. Some do fib up results but the general profiteering ones like this more just do this, they use scientific communication to puff up marketing materials basically. Now, on another point, that is a bit of an ethical violation in the communication context. Not sure about clinical research but I presume it would be for it also? Definitely gets dicey if you were to do that with clinical psychology research at least.

Even if it's not an ethical violation in the clinical context though, I do think most of these are no bueno even outside actual lies or deceptive data. The companies hiring them generally are just using their output to exploit perception of medical language and research to influence consumers, usually ignoring but sometimes explicitly violating personal agency. We can fancy talk that away but if it was a government or extremist network doing the same thing we'd properly call it out as a form of malign influence. In turn I have a high doubt most of those companies employees don't recognize that, so, they are technically supporting and enabling things they themselves couldn't even do in their research (eg no informed consent is a big problem).

 

[yoshy]

Historically, we have sometimes had to work on marketting materials, in particular in the cosmetics realm, and claims of positive effects are sometimes so incredibly weak that whilst they might superficially look good, they say almost nothing - "70% of users in a 3-week trial reported that they thought their skin looked smoother and more vibrant" - which could equally apply to mayo, as deirdre notes. (And looking at the image link in the #1, I ain't sure that's not mayo.)

Hello, I'd like to subscribe to your mayo skincare line. I'll take $5,000 worth. Where should I wire the money?

 

[Dave51c]

Hello, I'd like to subscribe to your mayo skincare line. I'll take $5,000 worth. Where should I wire the money?

Steady. You don't know what market segment @FatPhil's skincare line is aimed at. You might only receive a few millilitres for that amount of dosh!

 

[FatPhil]

Steady. You don't know what market segment @FatPhil's skincare line is aimed at. You might only receive a few millilitres for that amount of dosh!

It's pretty premium presently, as the product's new and we're aiming for oily adopters. But do look out for our branding and slogan:

Mayobelline - because I'm œuf it.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

It's pretty premium presently, as the product's new and we're aiming for oily adopters. But do look out for our branding and slogan:

Mayobelline - because I'm œuf it.

Stealing this as a partnership pitch to Maybelline and MayoClinic. Maybe it's mayobelline.

 

[JMartJr]

Maybelline... emphasis on the "maybe."

 

[deirdre]

But that's bad too! It's equivalent to p-hacking that I've been writing about. It's unethical to go fishing for other claims when the original goal of your study fails.

for a 'scientist' it seems pretty unethical to me too. on the other hand we push for kids to go into STEM fields and frankly there aren't enough important and serious jobs for them to take. Kinda skeevy to call yourself "Princeton" too.. i get it's a town, but most people know the word only as an ivy league college.

On an upnote, that's why we teach our kids in school "caveat emptor". <that's a joke, we don't. unless they choose to take Marketing classes in high school.
But we do have Consumer Protection laws and advertising laws and State Attorney Generals.. that's why i think their actual trials are conducted on the up and up, it's just the "silver tongue" wording that isnt cool.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

for a 'scientist' it seems pretty unethical to me too. on the other hand we push for kids to go into STEM fields and frankly there aren't enough important and serious jobs for them to take. Kinda skeevy to call yourself "Princeton" too.. i get it's a town, but most people know the word only as an ivy league college.

On an upnote, that's why we teach our kids in school "caveat emptor". <that's a joke, we don't. unless they choose to take Marketing classes in high school.
But we do have Consumer Protection laws and advertising laws and State Attorney Generals.. that's why i think their actual trials are conducted on the up and up, it's just the "silver tongue" wording that isnt cool.

Yeah to be honest too, these specific sorts of companies, I mean there's "a lot" of them but not very common. Usually it's their client or that clients pick-your-communication-subfield consultant doing the more malign acts with it. Which it is unethical on that end. Even for these companies though I do think the bigger issue to focus on is they're aware of this dynamic so they're intentionally and willingly enabling it - granted not sure about the stats on this part but I think the amount that actually skew research products themselves or conduct bad trials would be the minority.

Still curious on Phils input w/r/t the general clinical ethical angle on it. Field-specific ethics are always odd so inner-field that issued dynamic may not necessarily be unethical on their end vs just socially depending on what field.

 

[yoshy]

Kinda skeevy to call yourself "Princeton" too.

That's another great point. "Princeton Consumer Research" subconsciously connects to the University for me. If I saw that name in a regular article somewhere, I probably would assume it's part of the University.

 

[MonkeeSage]

That's another great point. "Princeton Consumer Research" subconsciously connects to the University for me. If I saw that name in a regular article somewhere, I probably would assume it's part of the University.

Kind of like how Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ were initially riding on bona fides of the "Stanford" in "Stanford Research Institute", even though the company had split from the university several years prior and had nothing to do with psychic experiments they were conducting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI).

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

Kind of like how Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ were initially riding on bona fides of the "Stanford" in "Stanford Research Institute", even though the company had split from the university several years prior and had nothing to do with psychic experiments they were conducting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI).

Sad but funnily great example too since that "Stanford" semantic connection gets made by the RV believer crowd all the time. Honestly makes sense with the wider UAP subject but the RV issue is so narrow, that audience is actually like. It's a bit baffliing they literally do not know anything about it. They don't know it wasn't associated with Stanford anymore, they don't know it was actually Ingo who termed it, they don't recognize the fact it was created pre-government proposal (split in below para). They also don't even realize all of those guys themselves have very well reasoned and stuck too RV is not the thing. RV is a specific concept representing human interaction with Remote Perception (something that exists in 100s of unique forms across many cultures and religions) that, foundationally outside their studies, entirely steal and smash together existing religious and cultural forms of RP and strip out all their actual cultural and/or religious understanding.

As for the split part. Long lost lore. Remote Viewing was actually created to represent a formal process for exteriorization in scientology. Before RV was made, they had no actual skill-based process to achieve that exteriorization, so RV was developed to account for that.
Now here's the sad part. Scientology plays weird with this concept. They accept and message about exteriorization, although they identify it isn't for everyone. What is Scientologies exteriorization though? Basically, this is largely paraphrased, but they think your Thetan soul has the ability to leave your body at certain periods for temporary times. How long you can do it for, what you can do during it and etc is all skills based though, you have to train up those skills to be able to reach the "final" level of exteriorization where your Thetan soul is fully integrated consciously and able to be controlled. Although, to "complete" this process, you have to die. There's no loopholes in the explanation, you have to die to achieve this.
So TLDR RV was created as the actual practical process for a concept that requires you to die to complete it. They also leave that point ambiguous. This doesn't work if you naturally die or if another kills you. They don't say you have to commit suicide but they basically discredit the other two options from allowing completion of the process.