All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Dec. 18, 2018 - Skeptoid
20:20
Skeptoid #654: Pop Quiz: Consumer Ripoffs

How well do you know your Skeptoid? Today's pop quiz focuses on consumer ripoffs. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Defending Against Consumer Scams 00:05:39
One thing I've always hoped for is that any long-time listener to Skeptoid will have an extra layer of defense against all the various consumer rip-offs out there, whether they're pyramid schemes, fraudulent health products, or just plain scams.
Today we've got a handy checkup for all of you who consider yourselves well defended against such things.
It's a Skeptoid pop quiz designed to test your knowledge of consumer rip-offs.
And it's coming right up on Skeptoid.
A quick reminder for everyone, you're listening to Skeptoid, revealing the true science and true history behind urban legends every week since 2006.
With over a thousand episodes, we're celebrating 20 years of keeping it focused and keeping it brief.
And we couldn't have done it without your curiosity leading the way.
And now we're even offering a little bit more.
If you become a premium member, supporting the show with a monthly micropayment of as little as $5, you get more Skeptoid.
The premium version of the show is not only ad-free, it has extended content.
These episodes are a few minutes longer.
We get rid of the ads and we'll replace them with more Skeptoid.
The Extended Premium Show available now.
Come to Skeptoid.com and click Go Premium.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Pop Quiz, Consumer Ripoffs.
Take your seats, class, because it's time for another pop quiz.
If you think you've done well enough on the previous quizzes, today is my chance to knock you down a peg.
Today's topic is consumer rip-offs, snake oil products, and other scams that leave the scientifically illiterate vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
So let's begin.
If you want time to think about each of these, just be ready to hit the pause button before I give the answer.
And feel free to take as much time as you need.
And don't try to look for a pattern because I used the random number generator on my Hewlett-Packard 15C, quite the classic, by the way, to place each correct answer.
Number one, network marketing.
What were once called multi-level marketing programs, barely legal variations on pyramid schemes, such as Amway, Herbalife, and doTERRA, have rebranded themselves as Network Marketing in an effort to escape the stigma.
Surveys of participants have proven what the statistical models predict, which is that virtually no participants ever either successfully sign people up as distributors or successfully sell their products to anyone else.
What percentage of all MLM participants lose money?
Rounded to the nearest percentage point.
A. 50%.
B. 98%.
C. 100%.
The correct answer is C. 99.95% of everyone who gets roped into a network marketing scheme will lose their money.
Maybe you will be lucky enough to be one of those 1 in 2,000 who manage to break even.
But to do so, you will typically need to be one of the company's founders.
Number two, how your credit card got stolen.
Sooner or later, nearly everyone's credit card number gets caught up in a data breach and receives some fraudulent charges.
In an effort to defend against this, some people always try for the latest and greatest high-tech way to transact securely.
Others go the opposite direction and only use their card when a paper slip is used, hoping to avoid all electronic transmission of their number.
Which of these three is the riskiest way to use your card?
A. Using your card via a phone app, such as Apple Pay or Android Pay.
B. Swiping the magnetic strip.
Or C. Using a chip card.
The correct answer is B. Swiping the magnetic strip.
In many cases, this puts your credit card number into a point-of-sale system.
It's often encrypted as the next step, but all of the large high-profile cases of millions of credit card numbers being stolen come from these systems, where the swiped numbers were stored somewhere in some database.
Phone apps and chip cards, however, create a direct encrypted connection to the bank using one-time tokens, never exposing your card number to any system at all.
But of course, all three of these are far safer than handing your card to a restaurant server.
Number three, cleansing diets.
It's finally become well reported in the mass media that cleansing regimens, such as seven-day courses of juice drinks, do your body more harm than good by causing it to scavenge its own lean mass to make up for missing nutrients.
And it's also becoming increasingly reported that the idea of cleansing some hypothetical toxins from your body is pure pseudoscience, as the filtration of actual toxins and wastes is done quite effectively by your liver and your kidneys.
Passwords and Immune Systems 00:08:20
Thus, the marketers have to resort to deceptive claims to keep the customers coming.
Which of these demographics is the biggest target market for cleansing products?
A. Poorly educated young men.
B. Well-educated young women.
C. Well-educated older adults.
The correct answer is B.
The biggest buyers of cleansing products are healthy, affluent, educated young women.
So that's where the manufacturers direct their advertising.
Unhealthy people tend to have real things to worry about, so they spend their healthcare resources on actual treatments.
Education correlates with affluence, which is where we find people with disposable income.
Younger people tend to be more into virtue signaling wellness trends.
Men tend to eat more meat and bread, while women tend to eat more fruit.
These cleansing drinks are nearly always high-sugar fruit drinks, so they appeal most to women with disposable income who lack health problems.
Number four, speed reading.
Speed reading courses still promise to help you boost your reading speed to astronomical levels, even though decades of research has proven that getting faster always comes at the expense of comprehension.
In fact, it's been shown that record-setting speed readers have about the same comprehension level as people who haven't read the text at all.
When average people sit down to read something with their desired natural level of comprehension, about what speed do they read at?
A. 1,200 words a minute.
B. 600 words a minute.
Or C. 300 words a minute.
The correct answer is C, about 300 words a minute.
Testing of people in the real world has shown that most of us read 200 to 400 words a minute, with the average right in the middle.
Above 400, comprehension drops off precipitously.
It's always worth remembering that humanity's greatest speed reader, the prodigious savant Kim Peake, had specialized hardware that allowed him to read 10,000 words a minute with near-perfect comprehension.
The total lack of a corpus callosum structure in his brain, possibly allowing him to process two pages at once in parallel.
Number five, immune system boosting.
Just as we've started to see with cleansing products, there's been a detectable uptick in the mass media of correct reporting of the fact that products claiming to boost your immune system are deceptive.
The immune system must be delicately balanced.
Too weak of an immune system leaves us vulnerable to pathogens.
Too strong of an immune system triggers autoimmune diseases, which are not something you want.
Which of these is not a consequence of a boosted immune system?
A. Obesity.
B. Psoriasis.
Or C. Multiple sclerosis?
The correct answer is A. Obesity.
Psoriasis and multiple sclerosis are both autoimmune diseases, which happen when the body's immune system becomes overactive.
If any of these products did truly have some ability to strengthen your immune responses, these are two very real possible outcomes you might experience.
Fortunately, we don't see this happening, which is another line of evidence that all such products are fraudulent.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
Ask your local public radio station to air the Skeptoid Files, a 30-minute radio-friendly version of Skeptoid that pairs two related episodes promoting real science, true history, and critical thinking.
And in these challenging times for public media, we're offering these broadcasts for free to radio stations, available on the PRX Exchange or directly from Skeptoid Media.
It's an easy ask.
Just send a quick message to your station's programming director.
By helping to bring the Skeptoid files to the airwaves, you'll help promote the essential skills we all need to tell fact from fiction.
Just go to your local station's website, find the programming director's email address, or just their general email address.
You can even use the telephone.
I know that might sound crazy.
It's an old legacy device that allows real-time voice communication.
I know that's weird, but hey, it's an option.
The world can feel chaotic, but you're not powerless.
When you promote critical thinking, you can help your community tell fact from fiction.
And that's how we shape a better future.
In uncertain times, spreading good ideas can make you feel helpful, not helpless.
Let's stand up for reason, truth, and understanding.
Together, get them to air the Skeptoid files from Skeptoid Media, available on the PRX Exchange, and they'll know what that is.
Number six, how your password got stolen.
One of the worst things you can do online is to use the same password on many websites or on your email or other services.
If your data ever got caught up in one of the large public data breaches and if that breach included that password, you may find out that many of your accounts have been broken into.
Which of these three options is the safest password policy to follow?
A. Use your browser's built-in password manager to create strong passwords.
B. Follow the instructions on websites for creating a password that includes a certain combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
Or C. Choose an easily remembered password consisting of a long string of common words.
The correct answer is A. Password managers built into modern web browsers generate strong passwords, but most important, they are different for every site and service you use.
The browser should remember them for you, so there's no downside to using strong, hard-to-guess passwords.
Here's what's wrong with the other two options.
Websites that restrict you to using certain combinations of upper and lowercase, numbers, and special characters will often not work with browser password managers, forcing you to manually invent a password that meets the requirements.
Frustrated users will often resort to the simplest password that works.
Research has proven these passwords are less secure.
Easily remembered passwords consisting of long strings of common words are actually great passwords due to their length.
The weakness is that it's a password you come up with and remember yourself.
Research has proven that people tend to reuse such passwords on multiple sites, thus making them less secure.
Number 7.
Bull Shido Martial arts are full of woo, especially when hucksters offer to sell amazing secrets like the touchless knockout.
One such example was a booklet called The World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets that used to be sold in the backs of comic books.
Who was its author?
A. Count Dante.
B. George Dillman.
C. Bruce Lee.
The correct answer is A. Count Dante.
John Timothy Keon, who legally changed his name to Count Juan Raphael Dante, promised his booklet would save your life.
His advertisement most boldly touted the Dem Mac, or touch of death, the ability to kill any opponent with one simple touch.
It was, of course, bullshito.
Bleach vs Alkaline Water Machines 00:02:42
Number eight, cryotherapy.
Cryotherapy is a current fad where you get into a chamber for three minutes at temperatures as low as minus 170 Celsius or minus 275 Fahrenheit.
Claims for its medical benefits are myriad, but many focus on athletic recovery just like using an ice pack.
It does not have this effect because cold air is a terrible conductor of heat.
Which of the following effects does cryotherapy actually have?
A.
It can reduce inflammation.
B.
It gives you a rush, akin to the fight-or-flight response.
Or C. Has some effectiveness at treating psoriasis?
The correct answer is B.
It gives you a rush.
It's called the cold shock response, like what you'd get jumping suddenly into freezing water.
Among its numerous physiological changes throughout the body are the production of dopamine in the brain and a great dump of adrenaline into the bloodstream, which produces endorphins.
This might feel nice in the short term, but if you were hoping for pain relief for your sore or inflamed knee or shoulder, sorry, but you're still going to need that ice pack.
Number 9.
Alkaline Water Machines Among the many products sold through network marketing schemes are machines that claim to ionize and alkalize your water, which, they claim, provides a huge range of health benefits.
But since pure water is not electrically conductive, it can't really be ionized.
So to make this possible, you have to add a special solution to your water to make it alkaline, a solution which is almost as expensive as the machine itself.
There is no medically sound reason you'd want to do this, but assuming you did want to anyway, just for grins, you could accomplish the same thing by adding a bit of what to your regular tap water.
A. Bleach.
B. Salt.
C. Baking soda.
The correct answer is A. Bleach.
Having dissolved metallic ions in solution in your water is all these machines achieve.
That's right, you could spend thousands of dollars to join a multi-level marketing scheme and get one of these silly water filters.
Or you could just add a small amount of Clorox bleach to your water and get identical results.
If you believe the marketing materials and are persuaded that this is the unsung secret to miracle health, just ask your doctor if adding a small amount of bleach to your diet is something you should do.
Selling Stars to Skeptics 00:03:35
Number 10, space properties for sale.
Many companies offer to sell you either real estate on Mars or the Moon or the naming rights to celestial bodies such as stars or asteroids.
Few of these services are legitimate, as any names they might sell are not legally recognized by anyone.
Which is the one organization on Earth which, by international treaty, is actually authorized to sell star naming rights.
A.
The International Star Registry.
B.
The International Astronomical Union.
Or C. Nobody.
The correct answer is C. Nobody.
Although many companies will take your money to sell you naming rights for a star, none of them have any legal right to do so.
The International Astronomical Union is the only recognized naming authority, but their services are not for sale.
They have special processes in place by which celestial objects acquire their names, but in no case are commercial transactions ever involved.
If you want a star named after you, your best bet is to become a god of an ancient culture.
And so ends this week's pop quiz.
How did you do?
If you got all 10 right, either you're naturally really good at protecting yourself from scams, or else Skeptoid is doing its job at finding the intersection between science literacy and consumer protection.
As always, tweet me your score at Brian Dunning or post it to the Skeptoid podcast page on Facebook.
Shout outs to premium members Abby Leland and Will Keeley, Rich Cattle, Alan Matthews, and Ruth Dunmeier, the peripatetic skeptic.
Also a shout out to TheaterWorks for having me come and give a talk on the science of immortality.
Get your shout out by logging into the members portal at skeptoid.com slash members.
And don't forget the Skeptoid books in your holiday shopping, available at amazon.com or wherever books are sold.
You're listening to Skeptoid, a listener-supported program.
I'm Brian Dunning from skeptoid.com.
Hello everyone, this is Adrian Hill from Skookum Studios in Calgary, Canada, the land of maple syrup and mousse.
And I'm here to ask you to consider becoming a premium member of Skeptoid for as little as five US dollars per month.
And that's only the cost of a couple of Tim Horton's double doubles.
And that's Canadian for coffee with double cream and sugar.
Why support Skeptoid?
If you are like me and don't like ads, but like extended versions of each episode, Premium is for you.
If you want to support a worthwhile nonprofit that combats pseudoscience, promotes critical thinking, and provides free access to teachers to use the podcast in the classroom via the Teacher's Toolkit, then sign up today.
Remember that skepticism is the best medicine.
Next to giggling, of course.
Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
From PRX.
Export Selection