or maybe a £30 ‘placebo’ would be a better description?

The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/News.aspx?NewsID=1220&PartnerID=3601

I want to know why one says Ovarian cancer on the side. They can’t possibly be touting it as a cure for that, can they?

(maybe it’s just that the proceeds go towards a charity, but the description doesn’t say)

Hmmm…

don’t it’s my ‘Power balance’ that needs improving just a serious bit of weight reduction and fitness increase.

I bet they can cure rheumatisms 😀

“do you believe in magic?

– then get your rubber band today!”

They’re much cheaper here… http://skepticbros.com/store/ $2AUS

Aren’t you convinced by the endorsement of Willow Koerber?

Shes not wearing them in that pic, took me a while to notice though 😀

I want to know why one says Ovarian cancer on the side.

Cos they’re for c–ts.

Wiggle have been selling them for a while now, incidentally. You can get a box of replacement holograms for sixty quid… 😯

just like these which seem to be all the rage in motorcycle trials…

Surely to be in balance you’d need to buy 2.

There will always be stupid people queueing up to waste their money…

i know im confused easily, but everytime this comes up i jump to its defence.

following a few physio sessions i began using a balance band and ive found it really great, the benefits are quite obvious and its such an easy and discreet thing ive found it easy to slot it into my routine…….

oh, sorry i mean a balance board

It’s a high-tech rabbit’s foot, crystal, lucky charm…
this says it all

Sad.

When I was working in ceramic research I was given a project to investigate the use of magnets on energy consumption/calorific value. A little like the magnets that were sold for reducing limescale build up in water pipes. The idea was that these magnets were installed around the gas supply pipes to kilns. By supposedly aligning the molecules of the gas the following combustion was supposedly more efficient and the calorific value of the gas maximised. There was very little actual evidence reported, or what there was had very little or spurious data to support the claims (surprise). A lot of the data that was available was from some Indian factories. What made these results so dubious was that the actual calorific value of the gas used in India varied so much even day to day that it was all but impossible to substantiate the findings.

I’m sure if you believe in these bands they may have an effect. Weren’t a number of pro riders (even LA) wearing something that looked like a towelling wrist band but worn mid fore-arm a few years back? I seem to remember these were supposed to do a similar thing cos they had some sort of metal embedded in the threads?

Snake oil indeed. If they could halp me loose the 15kg that I am overweight they could significantly improve my riding!

If they could halp me loose the 15kg that I am overweight they could significantly improve my riding!

Eat one. I’m sure it’ll do something…

Made with a stretch feature that extends easily over your hand 😆

as used by lots of pros at the redbull rampage

seems to work for them!
http://www.southerndownhill.com/forum/index.php/topic,235501.0.html

its all just placebo head stuff innit

We spoke to one of the sales reps at the Cycleshow. His final word on the matter was that if it’s just a placebo and it has an effect is that so bad?

We have two of their bands here in the office. We have removed the holgrams from one and taped up both so you can’t tell one from the other. We are trying to devise the best double blind test of them that we can. It’s hard to do when the claims are so vague.. ‘increase in core strength’.. ‘improves balance’.

So.. would all the scientists and rational thinkers out there like to suggest some suitable double blind tests we can do here at the office? We will be videoing all the ones that we do and publishing the results.

it’s just a placebo and it has an effect is that so bad?

If you charge £30 for it, and claim it works through magic, then yes.

By the way, I’m selling rocks that make you stoked+sick^(gnarl*radcore). They work by using troll magic. All you have to do is put them at the bottom of your camelbak or pocket when riding. Various sizes, so no need to worry about weight. Special price of £15 per rock. Anyone interested?

You’ll need a few thousand people for a start Mark; double blind tests with only a handful of peeps mean nothing.

wow cheap

there you go, 1.19. i might buy one and see the results.
its a bit like them oreo watches or watever they were that were made of some special rubber to make you concentrate better, BS

Those must be fake, they wont give you the same placebo effect.

Well it does have some effect. I bought one for the SO. One thing that is sure. It obviously don’t make her ride her bike like AN Chausson, BUT (and that is a big but in my book) when she wears it her cornering is better. She seems to have more facilities/less apprehension to tilt the bike over on the apex of an hairspin.

My LBS sells them and so far the best customers are home-nurses… As apparently old people are less prone to fell of when searing them…

Not really the case Kelvin. It depends on the test you do. If it’s simple and repeatable and therefor simply repeated by many others then the results build into evidence from which a conclusion can be reached. So, what experiment would you suggest?

We want a suggestion for a test that we will conduct. We will release the results of our test and encourage others to do the same. Data will henceforth accumulate and we can all then base our conclusions on the evidence.

BTW.. We did the same tests these reps were doing on our stand but instead of using their bands we used the apples we’d bought for our lunch. Guess what we found out?

If anyone wants to know where we bought our apples from you can send us £30 and we’ll tell you 🙂

Mark, I’d be interested to see the results of a test where you give a load of people the bands, but tell them they make you better at doing something else, eg: remembering stuff. Then see what happens.

Those must be fake, they wont give you the same placebo effect.

how can it not give the placebo affect, the word placebo describes that basically the band does nothing its all psychology. so therefore a 1.19 one will do the same thing as the £30 one

Both my cashpoint and my credit card have holograms on them. Might tape them to my wrists.

how can it not give the placebo affect, the word placebo describes that basically the band does nothing its all psychology. so therefore a 1.19 one will do the same thing as the £30 one

You mean they don’t make you sing like Brian Molko?

The amount paid for a ‘placebo’ does have a measurable effect on the result due to the fact you have laid out a lot of money for it and therefore if it doesn’t work you will feel a right tool.

This has been suggested with tests on painkillers from supermarkets where the measurable effects of a leading brand have been better than those of a cheaper/supermarket’s own brand despite the actual drug being the exact same substance in each case.

See Ben Goldacre’s book, Bad Science for the references.. In fact http://www.badscience.net is well worth a look.

Idea for a test? Get the salesman to jump across the canal 100 times; 50 times with the hologram in place, 50 times without the hologram. Compare the number of times he falls in with and without the help of the hologram.

Surely you don’t have to wear them on your wrist, so how about stuffing them up people’s backsides so they don’t know if they’ve got a £30 one or just a normal rubber band?

Well I’ve just bought one for a laugh, I shall wear it the next ride after it comes and I will report back my findings.

I say well done to Chain Reaction Cycles, for recognising what feeble minded, gullible people their customers really are.

Serving up £30 plastic tat, and treating us with the contempt we so richly deserve. 😯

My doctor has had to start prescribing me 250Mg placebo tablets as the 100Mg ones weren’t working as well any more.

Placebo’s are a sillpery slope – will we all end up carting around 30cm holograms in 3 years time.

I tried one of these and it made my hand go blue. Am I doing something wrong?

We spoke to one of the sales reps at the Cycleshow. His final word on the matter was that if it’s just a placebo and it has an effect is that so bad?

Yes, it’s bloody despicable. People might have genuine medical problems and believe this total BS can help them, which it can’t.

See my second post on this thread re ovarian cancer. The more i think about it the more angry it makes me. Even if it does just signify some donation to an ovarian cancer charity it implies an endorsement of the product.

mark randomally pick a number of routes, rocky , rooty, muddy, singletrack [ sorry you are oop north try your best on that one]
All use the same bike specced from whichever sponsor is daft enough too provide bikes for this…fingers crossed you know a bike building publicity hungry local manufacturer to support you 😉
Randomally asign bikes to riders on the day.
Match riders to ability one with band one witout – third rider rides with them and also scores the Gnarness of each- not quite objective but best I can think off. At end of ride rider says how stoked they were as does the third rider. I cant think of a trully objective measure you can use sadly,
Repeat till all riders have done each trail once with or without band.
Compare scores
Make eroneous claims about how science has proved blah de blah using a baddly scaled graph …it is the stw way. Perhaps use language you dont understand the scientific use of like proves, without doubt , for certain in your conclusion.
Make your own with stw logo and retire on huge profits with a warm glow in you heart knowing you have made us all ride better and improved the popular understanding of science