Substitute dragons for tigers if you need to make the analogy richer.
Yeah just because there are things like facts, we shouldn’t let them get in the way of “homeopathic cures” and overdoses on vitamins to make urine that pretty, pretty color. That should surely keep the rhinovirus at bay as there’s nothing that it hates more than hot steaming Mello Yellow.
I forgot to mention, if I’m still feeling lousy at the end of the first day that I felt symptoms, my wife makes me a hot toddy at bedtime. Drink that sucker and go to bed, and I usually feel much better in the morning. I don’t think the whisky actually does anything to get rid of the cold, but it helps me sleep.
Making it tigers is also not appropriate. Neither of us thinks that you are at risk of tiger attack, but we both know that being exposed to cold germs is common. Go into the tiger pit at the zoo with your wallet and now you’ve got a valid analogy.
You keep squawking about “facts,” but you don’t have a study to back up your insistence that the product doesn’t work, so you don’t have a fact in any sense. Test your hypothesis with a proper study to discern the facts or find evidence that someone has done so.
You may be thinking “well, if it worked, they would do a study to prove it, so no one needs to do a study to prove otherwise: it doesnt work.” The problem with that reasoning is simple. They are selling a product, not doing medical research - that is to say, they are business prople, not scientists. As business people, their interest is to sell more product, not to prevent colds. If they did such a study, they run the risk of being unable to demonstrate the efficacy of the product, which would obviously be very bad for business. If they did “prove” the product worked, we wouldn’t believe them anyway, as they obviously have a vested interest in that outcome, so the potential to sell more product as a result is iffy. They already sell lots of product without proving that it works, so why would they take the chance of hurting sales? They don’t care if it works, because it sells. In fact, they probably don’t even know if it works.
Was faking the original study to “prove” the efficacy of the product okay? No way, although really, who ever believes that these types of claims are properly tested anyway? I take the product because it has worked for me in the past, not because I approve of the company’s business practices. Pharmaceutical companies have pretty shitty business practices too, but I don’t decline antibiotics on principle when I have a bacterial infection.
This product has nothing to do with homeopathy, which involves administering extremely diluted poisons that cause the same symptoms as a particular illness. You yourself say it is a vitamin. Scientists continue to make discoveries regarding the roles of vitamins and minerals in our health. Most agree that dietary deficiencies will result in poor health, even if they do not agree on exactly what constitutes a deficiency or what the specific results of such a deficiency will be for a given person. There is a lot left to learn about the immune system, but the idea that a nutritional supplement containing vitamins and trace minerals could support the immune system is not far-fetched. The mechanism by which it could work is not based on an absurd premise, unlike homeopathy. This does not prove that Airborne works, obviously, but the idea of a vitamin supplement providing your immune system with what it needs to do its job isn’t voodoo. There’s no reason to believe these nonscientists could manage to hit upon the absolute best combination of ingredients, but the idea that they have managed to put something together that is better than nothing, a pretty low bar, is also not absurd to consider.
I was put off by the product initially myself, and found its bragging about being “created by a second-grade teacher” to be particular cause for scorn. Spending your days drilling children on single digit subtraction problems and helping them learn to write legible cursive does not seem likely to enhance anyone’s ability to create an effective cold product. I only started using it after getting a cold every single time I flew. I didn’t expect it to work, but after taking it and flying, I didn’t get sick. Coincidence, I figured, but I like to keep my mind at least a tiny crack open - not far enough for my precious skeptical cynicism to escape, but enough to accept the possibility that I am wrong - so I took it again, and it worked again, etc. Why should I ignore this? Rejecting evidence that does not meet with your expectations is not good science.
In my personal experience, the product is much more effective than nothing, for me. Success is the statistic that matters here.
Your post (that really needs to be formatted better for reading’s sake) can be summarized thusly.
Maybe you don’t understand what “summarized” means. Does your link go to something that says the same thing I said, only more succinctly? That is, does it contain the ideas of my post, leaving out the details?
No, it does not. It talks about confirmation bias. I don’t talk about confirmation bias at all. It is not a summary of what I wrote.
Here is the definition of confirmation bias from your citation:
“In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias (or confirmatory bias) is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.”
Now since the link did not summarize my post, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you are actually meaning to accuse me of being guilty of confirmation bias.
Look, I’m leaving lots of space to make this easy to read. I’m typing on a small screen, so it’s not always clear how the formatting will turn out.
I know there was a big block of text in my previous post, but if you can manage to read it, you will see that I did not expect the product to work. It’s the paragraph that starts out “I was put off by the product initially myself.”
So my preconception was that the product would NOT work. Confirmation bias would thus imply that I would seek evidence to confirm that I was correct - that the product would not work, and that I would lend undue weight to evidence that supported my hypothesis of it NOT working.
I did not learn of the product and think “Yay! Finally a way to prevent colds!” trot out the store and buy some, then go home to communicate with my dead cats using a ouija board and some carefully selected herbs.
Upon learning of the product, I thought “yeah, right,” and was annoyed by the second-grade teacher thing and reminisced for a moment about what a douchebag my second grade teacher was. I thought it would be nice if a product existed that would do what this one claimed to, but I did not think it was actually a possibility.
Classic “confirmation bias,” huh?
You seem like a smart person, so I’m sure that you realize that one can’t prove a negative, right? If you feel better for taking it, then good on you, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a placebo effect.
I beg to differ, sir. One most certainly CAN prove a negative.
Regardless…
Stpauler believes that the efficacy of this product has been DISPROVEN because the “proof” that it worked was untrustworthy.
I assert that the efficacy of the product has indeed NOT been proven, but nor has it been DISPROVEN, and that lack of proof that something is true is not sufficient to prove that it is NOT true.
We both agree that there is no scientific proof that the product works. Here stpauler discards actual logic and ventures off into the land of unfounded assumptions, waving a big “SCIENCE” flag without really quite understanding what it means.
Was your evaluation of the product done blinded?
No, kayaker, it certainly was not. I make absolutely no claim that I have proven that this product works or conducted scientific testing on the product. That’s why I said:
“I take Airborne, and yes, I am aware that they have not provided convincing scientific evidence that it works… if I remember to take it early enough, it really does seem to prevent a full-blown cold from developing. Of course I can’t know for certain what would have happened in any given instance if I hadn’t taken it, so I don’t expect to convince anyone”
in my initial post.
I do not have the means to produce an identical placebo product, for one thing.
For another, why would I bother testing it at this point? I don’t see any potential for gain here besides potentially saving myself $5 a year, so what would be the point?
So if I conduct a proper experiment and “prove” the efficacy of the product, do you suppose that rules out the possibility that the product also causes harm? If the product prevents colds, does it logically follow that it does not cause cancer?
The product contains vitamins. Vitamin supplements contain vitamins. They have existed for a long time. Lots of doctors recommend that we take them. There is danger of taking too much of some vitamins. This product, when taken as I have described, does not contain excessive amounts of the vitamins which have been determined to carry this risk. This product has not been associated with health problems, and it has been on the market for years now. Therefore, I have concluded that the risks are minimal, and definitely well below the risks associated with other products that I consume.
My determination that the risk of harm from this product is minimal does not mean that I believe that there is no potential from harm from “woo.” I am referring only to this particular product and have assessed its risks, not saying “what’s the harm in alternative medicine?”
I would not classify this product as “woo,” but as a vitamin supplement. The mechanism by which a vitamin supplement could help does not rely on mysticism.
I am not eschewing scientifically proven medicine in favor of it, and as far as conventional medicine’s ability to properly assess risks of medication goes, how do you account for the repeated revocation of FDA approval of so many pharmaceuticals?
Thalidomide, anyone?
I actually took this stuff once, when it was proffered by a colleague. The effect for me was to feel woozy and light-headed, and not in a pleasant way. If whatever is in this stuff has that effect on others, I can see where one might feel “better”.
Re: proving a negative. From Wiki: A negative proof is a logical fallacy which takes the structure of: X is true because there is no proof that X is false. Which is the position you’re taking with this.
I think the “harm” is in using fantastical thinking.
I do not actually find that it makes me feel better… Or feel anything. If you feel bad when you take it, it’s already too late, in my experience.
You have lost my premise in your oversimplification of my argument. I am not saying that x is true. I am saying that it has not been proven that x is false and thus x COULD be true.
An unproven claim is not inherently false.
An unproven claim is not inherently true.
An unproven claim may be true.
An unproven claim may be false.
Get it?
Here’s an interesting bit on proving a negative:
One of those things that is the stuff of academic debate for the ages, I’m thinking. So how’s that cold coming along? 
You seem to be confusing a vitamin supplement with paranormal activity.
There exists no scientifically proven cold preventive that I am rejecting in favor of “visualization,” so that doesn’t apply either.
Your “whatstheharm.net” website comes up with nothing when I do a search for Airborne.
And Penn stresses repeatedly in the advertisement that the site contains anecdotal evidence only. So aside from the fact that the site does not appear to address Airborne at all, and thus has no evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) that it is harmful, you are advocating that I reject my own anecdotal evidence of personal experience for someone else’s hearsay anecdotal evidence?
It’s fun to feel like you’re getting all sciency, so I hate to rain on your parade, but there’s more to it than your blogs and YouTube videos cover.
Click on whatstheharm.net
Then click on Vitamin Megadoses
2nd from the bottom (control+F airborne as needed)
This only further substantiates my assertion. The “harm” cited is that the product has not been proven to perform as claimed and thus the monetary expenditure may have been for naught. Which is exactly what I have said all along.
The harm is that you may be out $4 or $5. Eek, I’m terrified.
Thank Zeus you have opened my eyes to this horrible danger. I’m headed off to Walgreens to ransack the display and save some lives… I mean coins…
while y’all were arguing I was continuing to have an *extremely mild cold *completely surrounded by people that feel much worse.
so, I’m also feeling smug. 
Aw, look at your cute little placebo effect… You just think you’re not sick because of your confirmation bias.
