Amway's Recruitment Tactics Similar to those of Cults

I recently ran across a short article about a California clinical psychologist whose license to practice was put on probation because he persuaded two of his clients to enroll in his Amway business.

The premise of Amway is that you are your own boss and that you buy Amway products that you then sell for a profit. The Real way to make money with Amway, though, is to sign up people you personally know to sell Amway. Because you were the one who enrolled these new Amway sales people, you get a share of the profits from any Amway products they sell. You will also get profit from the sales of anybody they sign up, and anybody they sign up, and on and on. The way to riches, supposedly, is get as many people as possible in your pyramid.

Although I long ago gave up being surprised at the shenanigans perpetrated by persons in my honored profession, the idea that a psychologist would make such a grievous violation of the ethics of the profession as to enroll clients in his Amway business genuinely disturbed me.

As a young graduate student, I was tricked into attending an Amway sales meeting by an employer. The techniques he, and the speaker subsequently used, were reminiscent of cult recruitment techniques.When I returned to graduate school to earn my doctorate, I had to find a way to support myself that gave me the flexibility to attend classes and work at an internship. I found a great job working as a painter for a realty management company. The company allowed me to paint empty apartments on weekends and on rare free days, and they paid far more than I could have gotten as a temporary office worker or a job at the university. I worked primarily for only one realtor at the company, whom I will call Mr. Jones, who was a friendly, garrulous man, who would typically give me a work list in the middle of the month.

Bait and Switch

A year later, and well into graduate studies, Mr. Jones called me at home and asked if I might be willing to speak to his men's group because one of the members of the group had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and the members knew nothing about mental illness. Perhaps I could demystify this illness for them, he said. Of course I was flattered, and I depended on his business so I said 'yes' and arranged to meet Mr. Jones at his home the following Thursday evening.

Things got a little weird when I arrived at Mr. Jones' house. I carried a small stack of several one page handouts I had written up on bipolar disorder and Mr. Jones strongly suggested that we use his car. He then told me that his wife was joining us, which was a surprise because we were, after all, going to a men's group. I assumed, though, that she would drop us off and then pick us up when the group ended. The drive itself was confusing because Mr. Jones took surface streets for much of the drive instead of the highways and he ended up driving us to a neighboring city. It was also dark, which made trying to keep track of our route difficult. Finally, though, Mr. Jones pulled up in front of a two storey house and the sidewalks around the house were crowded with parked cars. When I entered the house, it was not at all what I had expected.

There were at least fifty people packed into the two main downstairs rooms, sitting closely together in rented metal folding chairs and all were listening carefully to a speaker, who was standing and speaking in a twangy Southwestern American accent. Initially, I refused to believe that I'd been conned and thought "how interesting — the men's group brought in a guest speaker to talk to the men and their families". My second thought was 'I'm not prepared to speak to this many people about bipolar disorder". After listening to the speaker for five minutes, though — and he spoke for two hours — it was clear that I had been lied to.

I initially thought it was a religious revival meeting. As it happened, though, it was not. It was a recruitment meeting for Amway. Once I figured that out, I listened with careful attention to the speaker and afterwards made notes of what had transpired. The speaker's style was dynamic and professional and at the same time, folksy and homespun. He spoke without the benefit of a microphone, notes or slides. There was a considerable amount of audience participation, where audience members would shout out 'Yes!' when asked if they wanted to be rich and 'No!' when asked if they were always going to work for somebody else. The speaker frequently mocked traditional ways of making money and provoked laughter from the audience when, for instance, he calculated how long it would take an average American worker, with negligible tax deductions, to save enough money to pay cash for a house. After speaking for nearly two hours, he chose people seemingly at random from the audience to talk about their "dreams." The dreams were painfully uncomplicated. One woman dreamed of owning horses. Another dreamed of having the money to send her two high school children to college. A man, a plumber, said that he dreamed of setting up his own business so that he never again had to take orders from other people. Still another man dreamed of owning a house. They were all reasonable aspirations and the speaker told these people that every one of those dreams was realizable, and that enrolling in the company he represented was the first step toward fulfilling those goals.

It became clear to me that many of the audience members were already enrolled in this business and had invited people they knew to the event to try to enlist them. The way to get rich with this company, the speaker told us, was to enroll other people into the company, and for this night and this night only, the guests were being offered the opportunity to buy an introductory sales kit for a sizeable discount. By investing in this company, and then by signing up our friends – and we were assured that we would be doing our friends a favor by doing this — one got a percentage of the profit of the sales of that person, and of the sales of anyone our friends subsequently recruited.

Recruitment

After the talk, all of the "new people" were approached individually by a company sales person who asked each of us to talk about our dreams. I listened to several of these stories. Two of the would-be recruits were retired and said that they hoped to find a way to supplement their social security incomes. A man in his early forties had recently lost the job he had had for over twenty years. A woman in her thirties told the recruiter that she had just gone through a devastating divorce and was working at two jobs. She desperately wanted to spend more time with her three children. Still another person said that he had recently dropped out of college after three years of mediocre grades. All of us were asked if we had a few hours a week to devote to making these dreams come true. And we were given stories of ordinary people, people like ourselves, who had become wealthy and made their dreams come true with this company. The would-be recruits in the house were also urged to talk to anybody in attendance that night to learn how incredibly easy it would be to become rich.

I spoke briefly to three people at the house who were already signed up with the company. While all three praised the company and its philosophy, none of the three would tell me exactly how much money they were making. Even Mr. Jones, who had lied to me to get me to attend, hedged about his profits. The most he would say is that "It's a wonderful company and they don't just sell soap. They're linked up with other companies. I can buy just about anything – even a Christmas tree, from them, and sell somebody that Christmas tree for less than they'd pay at a lot. We're like a big business family." He then told me that while this was a special meeting, he and a few others met twice a month as a way to review their business plans and stay focused on their goals. Fifteen people bought introductory sales kits from the speaker. And they bought them because they were tricked and manipulated into doing so. The speaker and those who had brought recruits to this meeting used several tools of influence and persuasion and those poor fifteen people never saw it coming.

Betrayal of Confidence

First of all, to get me to attend the meeting, Mr. Jones used the information he had about me. He knew that I was a psychology graduate student and that I was dependent on my job with his company, and for those reasons, would be unlikely to refuse. He appealed to my vanity and willingness to help others and he tailored his message to tap into this knowledge. He told me that I had the ability to help an entire group of men by just talking to them for an evening. He made the undertaking attractive and attractiveness is a remarkably effective manipulative tool.

We tend to respond to a likable person in a positive way and the message that person transmits becomes linked with our attraction to that person. There was an interesting study carried out by a psychology professor who wanted to test the strength of social attractiveness. He divided his research assistants, all students, into two groups: those who dressed very conservatively and those who dressed in more casual, alternative lifestyle clothing. The professor then had his researchers approach students on campus and ask for change to make a phone call. The result of the study was that the students were much more likely to get money from students who looked like them. Those dressed casually got more money from students who also dressed casually than they did from students who dressed formally. Conversely, those who were dressed conservatively got more money from students dressed conservatively. By asking me to speak to a self-help men's group, Mr. Jones was letting me know that he was concerned about mental health, too – that we shared this in common.

The concept of likeability is widely known and used, and is particularly employed by recruiters to cults. Multiple studies have shown that cult recruiters tailor their initial message to fit/match as closely as possible the person they are trying to recruit. So, if a would-be recruit expresses interest in social justice, the recruiter will tell him that the purpose of their group is dedicated, for example, to racial equality. If the potential recruit expresses interest in art or music, then the recruiter might well tell him the group has a rock band or has amongst its members several artists, and that the group frequently puts on art shows.

Trapped

Another point worth noting is that Mr. Jones had figuratively trapped me. This is a fairly common technique in spiritual abuse and cults, by the way, where the potential recruit is removed from his or her environment and spends a weekend or week at a rural retreat. From my perspective, I was in a stranger's house in an unfamiliar city. It's true that I could have insisted that Mr. Jones give me the address of the house where the recruiting was taking place and then used the telephone to have a taxi return me to my car, which was parked at Mr. Jones's home. Had I done that, though, I would almost certainly have lost my job with Mr. Jones and causing a scene would have defied a crowd of fifty people. I really was stuck and Mr. Jones knew I would be.Well, what about those fifteen people who spent a few hundred dollars on an introductory sales kit and believe that by working a few hours a week that they would become millionaires? Well, several extremely reliable tools of persuasion and manipulation had been used on them, and they are hard tools to resist.

Social Proof

Social proof means that we tend to see behavior as correct the more we see other people do it. For the most part, it's a good survival tool. If you're walking down a city street and see a hoard of people running towards you with terror in their eyes and constantly looking over their shoulders, you'll probably turn around and run with them, figuring that what ever they're running from is something you should be running from, too. If someone is in a social setting where she is not sure how to act, taking cues from those around her will probably be a big help in her acclimatizing to the environment. Although social proof can benefit us, it's a powerful concept and is too often used by persons who want to shape our behavior.

Think of those folks at the pyramid scheme recruitment rally. Had any of them been asked earlier in the day if they had any interest in selling soap for a living or of investing in a company that they had not personally looked into, it's likely that they all would have said no. But what happened? They were surrounded by people who swore this method would bring them wealth. They had heard a pleasant, thoroughly likeable man talk to them for two hours about how easy it was. Examples of people "just like them" had been repeatedly been given to demonstrate how easy making money with this company was. Total strangers had taken an interest in them and asked about their dreams. There was a roomful of people insisting that this method was easy and worked and would take little of their time. Logically we would think that these fifteen people should have said "No, I'm not going to make a financial and time commitment without thinking about it carefully and without checking out the company". But there was a lot of pressure not to do that. When one isn't sure how to act, or if one feels uneasy in a particular setting, when one feels awkward, the concept of social proof dictates that we conform to the group norm.

Social proof is an enormously powerful tool which can absolutely shape behavior and attitude. As an experiment, Dr. Solomon Asch had a group of people, ostensibly all volunteers, seated around a table. Unbeknownst to the one volunteer, all of the others at the table were colleagues of Dr. Asch. The group was shown a series of vertical lines of various lengths and each person in the group was asked individually to identify which lines were of the same length. Dr. Asch had instructed his associates to give an incorrect response and the volunteer was the second to last person to give his answer. Although the correct response was extremely obvious, 32% of the time, the volunteer gave the same incorrect response as the rest of the group members and 74% of the subjects conformed to the group answer one or more times, even though the correct answer was quite evident.

Stereotyping

Group members are just as likely to stereotype themselves as to stereotype others. In cults, for instance, there is a pervasive pressure to conform to a "we versus them" mentality. Irving Janis pointed out in his book Victims of Groupthink that this type of thinking can and often does result in the group feeling that they are always right and that their cause is morally justified. Really, what the group members end up believing is that they are always the good guys. They may recognize that their policy (or theology or world view or business plan) can be painful to some, but the rationalization is that ultimately overall good will result in their policies.So you might think of those poor folks who signed up to sell household products as a way to reach their dreams. The chances of their actually realizing their dreams selling these soap products were remarkably slim. Only a very small percentage of Amway distributors even recoup their initial investment. And yet they committed to working for a company they really knew nothing about and their decision was based almost exclusively on the pressure exerted by the group.

Look at it from their standpoint. They were in a crowded house with dozens of people very much like themselves: working people, honest and presumably with similar moral and ethical values. Their aspirations were listened to with avid and serious attention. People they had no reason to suspect told them that their dreams were realizable and offered themselves as examples. There was no dissenting opinion. In a situation such as that, those fifteen made a decision, almost certainly a foolish one.

Law of Commitment and Consistency

Most of the people attending the recruitment meeting who had already signed up with the company were suckers, too, and they were stuck in something called the Law of Commitment and Consistency. Commitment and Consistency holds that once we have made an important decision about something — and it can be anything from a business decision to a stand on a political issue — there are enormous psychological pressures exerted on us to adhere to that stand, even when faced with information that contradicts our commitment, and even when this contrary information is compelling and logical. Culturally, consistency is seen as a valuable character trait and most people want to be perceived as being consistent in their beliefs. This trait, though, is often used to our disadvantage by people less honorable than ourselves.

Mr. Jones, for example, used deceit to persuade me to attend the meeting but since so few people that sign up with this company even recover their initial investments, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Jones had made any money from the company himself. Despite tricking me into attending the meeting, he was reluctant to lie about his success with the company. Instead, he praised the company and talked about the bi-weekly meetings he and a few other soap salesmen attended as a way to keep focused on their goals. What these meetings really did is reaffirm their commitment to the company and strengthen their resolve to not let contrary information — in this case, lack of actual financial success — deter them from their resolve that they made a wise decision to invest in this company's business philosophy.

Pain and Authority

The authority exuded by the speaker at the soap product recruitment meeting also had an impact on the recruits. Probably the most powerful experiment on the power of authority was carried out by Dr. Stanley Millgram of Yale University. Dr. Millgram had long been disturbed by the compliance of ordinary people in the horrible atrocities carried out by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s against innocent people they did not know. Many of these crimes had been carried out by regular, seemingly normal people, and Dr. Millgram considered that one reason for this was authority. He decided to test this by setting up an ingenious but remarkably simple test.

Dr. Millgram advertised in a local newspaper for paid volunteers to participate in a scientific study on memory. He told the paid volunteers that he was particularly interested in how punishment can increase or decrease our ability to hold onto memories. His volunteers were paid not much more than the minimum wage. The volunteers worked in pairs. Seemingly randomly, he assigned one volunteer to be the teacher and the other volunteer to be the student. The student was strapped into a chair and electrodes were attached to his body. The teacher sat behind an impressive electronic control panel. The very officious doctor-scientist in a white lab coat stood next to the teacher and supervised the experiment. When the student volunteer, who was strapped securely in his chair, was asked a question and got the answer right, nothing happened. When he answered the question wrong, the teacher was instructed to give him an electric shock, which was done by controls on the control panel. Each time the student got a question wrong, the teacher volunteer was told to raise the electrical voltage of the shock by 15 volts. As the voltage of the shocks got higher and higher, the students began to beg the teachers to stop the experiment, saying that they'd had enough. However, the doctor-scientist in the lab coat assured the teacher that this was a very important scientific experiment and had to continue…and the teacher continued to raise the voltage.

You might think about this. These teachers weren't sadists. They were regular people. When the voltage got to 300 volts, the students strapped in the chairs screamed in agony and refused to answer questions at all. They insisted that they be unstrapped and let go. They said that they'd had enough. However, the doctor-scientist, always in his official looking white lab coat, insisted that the results of this experiment were important and that not answering a question was the same as getting the answer wrong. The teachers were instructed to continue with the shocks each time the student refused to answer a question, and the teachers did just that.Of course, the only real volunteers were the teachers. The poor students getting the electrical shocks were Dr. Millgram's research assistants and there were no shocks administered to anyone. The point of the experiment was to see how much pain the teacher was willing to give a total stranger just because an authority figure told him to. As it happened, almost none of the 40 teacher-volunteers stopped administering the shocks, even when they were begged to do so by the students, and not even when the student strapped in the chair was screaming in agony. When the person strapped in the chair begged to be released from the chair because he had a heart condition, 65% of the teachers continued giving the shocks when instructed to do so by the doctor-scientist in the white lab coat. In fact, some of the teachers pleaded with the doctor-scientist to let them stop but when the doctor-scientist said they had to continue with the shocks, they did. It was Dr. Millgram's conclusion that the teacher volunteers were willing to cause serious pain to another person because and authority figure told them that it was important.

In considering undue influence, one cannot minimize the importance of authority. All of us are prone to making important decisions based on the influence an authority figure exerts. The advice of a spiritual leader or political leader, for instance, or a financial or psychotherapeutic advisor, carries enormous weight in shaping most people's behaviors.

Conclusions

It is worthwhile pointing out, too, that while all people are susceptible to undue influence, those who are going through a major life change are particularly vulnerable. For decades, cults have recruited on college and university campuses because the recruiters know that many of the students are lonely and emotionally vulnerable because of being away from home for the first time. Divorce, a recent death in the family, the loss of a job, the recent death of a spouse, and a move to a new environment all place a person in a more emotionally fragile state than they would otherwise be in. They have lost a major stabling influence in their lives and are struggling to recover their emotional balance. So think again of those people being recruited into Amway. One of the fifteen who had bought the introductory sales kit had recently lost the only job he had had as an adult and a single mother of three was recently divorced. Neither of the two could likely afford the cost of the sales kits they'd purchased but both bought them anyway, and without bothering to investigate the company's claims. Why did they do that? Well, there were multiple reasons, as we have already discussed. Certainly, though, their traumatic life transition made them vulnerable.

On the face of it, the recruiting meeting seemed simple and straight forward. It was designed that way but truly it was remarkably complex and was arranged so that multiple cognitive and emotional forces were at play. The meeting was a setup for those poor recruits and very powerful forces were at play to get people to buy the introductory sales packages.

These same tools of influence and persuasion, though, are used for more nefarious purposes. Persons who end up losing several years of their lives in cults were coerced and manipulated by similar techniques. Scam artists bilk tens of thousands of victims a year using these methods. Thousands of people each year sign up for regional and national self-help programs for which there is no independent data showing that these self-help programs really work, and the recruiters for these self-help organizations absolutely know and use the tools of influence and persuasion. Unsuspecting people end up investing thousands of dollars, believing that the quick fixes promised to them will actually work. Lonely and vulnerable senior citizens continue to be victimized by unscrupulous care givers and family members, and spousal and partner abuse remains a serious and pervading problem. And how many times have all of us, at one time or another, been fooled into donating money to groups we really know nothing about? The fact is that the vast majority of us try very hard to live principled and honest lives. Because we do this, we are usually unprepared when someone uses tools of chicanery and undue influence to manipulate us into acting outside of our best interests. It is certainly worth knowing how to protect ourselves from them.

Further Reading

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini. Longman Higher Education. 1988.

Victims of Groupthink by Irving Janis. Houghton, Mifflin. 1972

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man by David W. Maurer. Anchor Books, Paper, (reprinted from the 1940 Bobs-Merrill Co. edition)

Cults in our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace by Margaret Thaler Singer and Janja Lalich, 2nd Edition, (Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Imprint: 1995, 2003)

About Dick DeVos, the son of the founder of Amway, his brush with the Federal Trade Commission, and his run for governor of Michigan in 2006 (he lost): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_DeVos.

The Curious Q-Ray

What price happiness? Apparently $59.95 and up (plus S&H)

Imagine that if you could, for as little as about 60 dollars (or up to about 250 dollars), get something that would make you feel better all the time, improve your golf game, help you win international marathons and maybe even some Olympic medals. And that’s not all. For no additional cost, you would get something that you could use to accessorize your clothes, even in a variety of colors and styles — you would both feel good and be fashionable too!

It all sounds great, and this is what the Q-Ray company claims on its website www.qray.com. Its main product is the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet® line, bracelets made of metal (or mostly metal, plated or unplated) in the form of a "C" with two flattened spherical knobs at the ends. Available internationally and heavily promoted on cable television, the bracelets come in different price ranges (i.e., the Natural Series, the Standard Series, etc.) with different finishes. Pendants incorporating a "C"-type coil inside a polymeric protective casing and titanium rings, again in the shape of a "C" and with the inscription "Q-Ray", as well as "ionized" sunglasses (along with other Q-Ray products) are sold at the website www.naturesbracelets.com (which states that it is not affiliated with qray.com).

So why "Q-Ray"?

The term "Q-Ray" is used because of a purported connection with "qi gong" (pronounced as "chee gung", as well as other ways), the famous "chi" that is the vital energy — the "bio-energy" — that flows through all living things and is essential to keep in balance to maintain good health. Once your "chi" is out of balance (too much "yin" or negative energy and not enough "yang" or positive energy), you feel lousy and listless — definitely not at your best. You put the bracelet on — with due consideration, apparently, for the clothes that you are wearing — and, in just seconds (according to a testimonial), your "chi" is balanced and you feel great, apparently ready to run a marathon. Your "yinned" out state is history and you get "yanged" up, basking in vim and vigor. Q-Ray restores the natural balance of your "bio-energy" and you are ready to take on the world.

But apparently feeling great is just not good enough — you’ve got to color match too because it states on the site that "The streamlined styling and Q-Ray benefits make our Standard Series the most important addition to any wardrobe."

Sounds great! How does it work?

The key to all this is a special, secret "ionization" process that the Q-Ray selection of products undergoes, which then allows the wearer to rebalance his or her bio-energy and perform at the highest level, of course becoming happier all along.

The Q-Ray site mentions "our exclusive Ionization™ Process". This is very curious — the process of ionization is the addition or removal of electrical charge from matter. Atoms are generally neutral, having the same number of negative and positive charges, electrons and protons respectively. The protons form a small nucleus, and the electrons are in shells around this nucleus. An atom from which an electron is removed is an ion — it has an excess of positive charge and is called a positive ion. Conversely, if an electron is added to an atom, it becomes a negative ion because it has an excess of negative charge.

Atoms in which all the electrons are tightly bound to the nucleus are called insulators, and atoms in which the outer electrons are only lightly bound are called metals. These outer electrons can be thought of as not belonging to any particular atom. When an electrical potential is applied, the electrons move readily and a current flows.

If electrons were added to a neutral metal (via static electricity, for example), then the electrical potential of the metal would change. Because people are usually electrically neutral and electrons are disposed to move to any region with a different potential, the electrons would move from the metal to the person who touched it. Since the Q-Ray® bracelet is made mostly or completely of metal, any excess or deficiency of charge would immediately be neutralized upon contact with human skin. This effect is called neutralizing or discharging. Anyone who has touched a doorknob during the winter after walking over a wool carpet is very well aware of it. Any difference in potential between a bracelet that had an excess of electrons and a human would be quickly eliminated.

Even if a Q-Ray bracelet were not in contact with human skin, there is no way to permanently "ionize" metal that is exposed to air. Since there are naturally occurring free ions floating around everywhere, any metal with an excess of positive or negative charge — even isolated from other metal — would eventually discharge. Touching the metal would just accelerate the process. It therefore does not appear that the "exclusive Ionization™ Process" that is claimed is an ionization process that works according to any of the usual physical laws.

So how do I use Q-Ray products? What type of "ray" actually is a "Q-Ray"?

Just as for rays of light, focusing apparently is very important for rings and bracelets but it is not clear why. For example, it is stated on the Nature’s Bracelets site that "For maximum effect, ring should be work (sic) on the pinky or ring finger of your left hand". As to the bracelets, they are to be worn on the right wrist with the terminals facing up (palm down) or, if that doesn’t work, on the left wrist with the terminals facing down (and palm down). The pendants — which apparently do the same thing — can be worn any old way around the neck — it doesn’t appear to matter. From all of this, it does not appear that there is any focusing of "rays" going on in any particular direction because the rings, bracelets and pendants are claimed to have the same effects. It is also not clear what the "ionized" sunglasses are focusing, or where.

So maybe it’s like magnets or copper bracelets?

Nope - according to Q-Ray, magnetic bracelets and wraps can’t balance your body’s flow of "chi" — only "ionized" products can do that. Stated simply, magnets don’t work and copper just turns your wrist green. The Q-Ray products are different and are not to be confused with these other objects.

What precautions should be taken?

There are a number of things that you should not do, such as place your Q-Ray product on metal surfaces or allow the terminals to touch. What will happen should you do so is not stated. You should also consult with your doctor to see if it is safe to wear your Q-Ray product while you are pregnant. There is some very sensible advice however. For example, you are supposed to "…stay away from any high voltage electric areas while wearing a wet bracelet". Not much to argue about there.

But why not many bracelets all at once?

If one bracelet does all that is claimed, then several should be even better. Although there are discounts available for buying more than a single bracelet, apparently you are supposed to give them to those you want to help out, not keep them yourself. It would seem that if a guy were decked out in a few bracelets, a few rings, a pendant or two and had all this topped off with a pair of "ionized" shades, he might even be able to even finally dispense with that Viagra.

Q-Ray as a fashion statement.

It is extremely curious that the fashion elements of Q-Ray products are mentioned in the same breath as their beneficial effects. Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but if a product could make me feel good all the time and cost less than about 60 dollars (plus S&H), I don’t think I would very much care about how it looked. It could be the ugliest thing in the world — it could even clash with my tie! — but I would still likely wear it. Religiously. Day and night. Everywhere. Being out of fashion would not prevent me from having continuous feeling of well being. But maybe that’s just me.

Why not send in your old bangles?

Although Q-Ray and Nature’s Bracelets sell various products, neither offers the service of "ionizing" sunglasses, bracelets, etc. that people already own. It seems that there would be a great demand for this. After all, many of us have such items that we are fond of, and would be happy to pay to have them "ionized" so that we would have even better reasons to be fond of them. And since there is no magnetization going on (which wouldn’t work on gold or copper, for example), it appears that any piece of jewelry could be treated with the "ionization" process. This could then allow my old Ray-Bans to not only protect my eyes but to also make me feel great while doing so!

The secret.

Perhaps the key to unlocking all the mysteries in regards to the Q-Ray product line can be found in the pendants that the Q-Ray company sells. On the Q-Ray site, it states "Pendants offer all the bio-energy and benefits of our Q-Ray Bracelets in an attractive pendant designs. … Pendants are infused with spiritual energy (italics added) specially designed to enhance concentration and focus." It appears that the "exclusive Ionization™ Process" is really a "spiritual energy" infusion process and not something that has anything to do with physics. That clarifies everything. I’m going to throw out my crummy copper bracelets, magnet wraps and crystals too, and get some of these Q-Ray products. They are obviously superior. After all, where else can you get "spiritual energy" that you can hang around your neck?

Note: In a case against the marketers of the Q-Ray ionized bracelet, a court ruled in favor of the Federal Trade Commission in September, 2006. The court stated that it would require the defendants to turn over $22.5 million in net profits and pay back up to $87 million to consumers (www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/09/qray.shtm). In 2002, the Mayo Clinic presented the results of a double-blind test on the bracelets that found them to be as effective as placebos (www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/inside.asp?AID=206).

The author is a Ph.D. Aerospace Engineer who has worked at NASA and says jewelry does nothing for him.

Oscar, the Hospice Cat — Or Kitty Kevorkian?

July 2007 news included the case of a cat named Oscar who allegedly predicted which patients in a hospice would soon die. As SF Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll noted (30 Jul 2007), this seems a bit of a stretch.

"... Oscar's 'uncanny knack of knowing when people are going to die' [looks fishy]. Apparently he walks aloofly around the halls of the Providence, R.I., nursing home where he lives, and then settles down with a person who, only a few hours later, dies. Oscar somehow intuits the imminence of death and provides succor in these last hours - or so the story goes.

"From the evidence, an equally viable theory is that Oscar kills people, but no one has mentioned that possibility.

"The staffers at the nursing home have suggested that perhaps Oscar 'notices telltale scents,' although if dying has its own distinctive odor, you'd think someone else would have noticed it by now. Cats don't have particularly sensitive noses; if a dog was cuddling with pre-croak patients, we might have something.

"Another theory floated is that Oscar notices telltale behavior, although - what might that telltale behavior be? Why haven't nurses noticed it? Shouldn't we be hiring nurses who are more perceptive than cats about health issues, particularly imminent death? 'We all think it's just a head cold, but that cat says it's cancer. You might want to get your affairs in order.' Talk about spooky.

"Besides, the whole story is fishy, you should pardon the expression. Empathy is not really a cat virtue. They rarely notice human quirks that do not directly relate to their own well-being. Horses, by contrast, are herd animals, and are thus exquisitely sensitive to the moods and habits of the beings around them. Maybe the nursing home should hire a horse. 'Here, Buttermilk, take a look at Mrs. Peterborough.'"

BAS Board Member Norm Sperling suggested, tongue cattily in cheek, that perhaps Oscar is just a cover story for a serial killer on a warped euthanasia mission. I wondered how many laps Oscar actually napped on; in a hospice he was certain to curl up with a dying patient fairly often. Could observers be ignoring "negative hits" and emphasizing positive results? Are weak and dying patients least likely to kick the cat off?

Yes, I suppose it is possible that Oscar can sense something about dying patients beyond immobility–rather like animals are said to sense earthquakes. Trouble is, every study so far of quake-sensing has come up negative–folklore or legend, not fact.

I am not anti-cat–one of my best friends is a cat. I think cats and other pets can seem gentle and concerned when "their humans" are ill. But I also know that there is no actual experimental evidence showing actual empathy in small-brained mammals (as opposed to apes and perhaps dolphins and even elephants). Cats and other pets can clearly show self-interest by being gentle with injured monsters such as the humans they live with. It is very easy to anthropomorphize this–to read too much human emotion and thought pattern into it. Pets are comforting to us, even though they may just be making nice with the weird creatures who open the Purina bag.

And Oscar? Couldn't he be doing his best to get along and keep the Purina flowing, curling up with humans least likely to kick him out and earning praise from other humans? Maybe showing some appreciation for a quiet snooze? And isn't a fair amount of human empathy a bit similar to this, as well?

Thanks are due to Jon Carroll for his skeptical take on a cuddly story and for his recognition that there are multiple explanations possible for things—even seemingly "aw, shucks" events.

Aromatherapy: Does It Pass the Smell Test?

Aromatherapy is only one of oodles of alternative medicines and holistic treatments that have currently captured part of the public's wild imagination. These holistic approaches, including acupuncture, therapeutic touch, and mall shopping, are part of a multi-billion dollar industry.

What exactly is aromatherapy? By dismantling the word, you'd think that it would be related to odors, but you'd only be partially correct. And since evidence of its therapeutic properties is wanting, it's not even really therapy. In other words, if we remove the two main words from the term, we end up with, well, nothing. So this could be an article about nothing. But since aromatherapy is part of the holistic hullabaloo, for arguments' sake, let's assume it exists.

Like all holistic treatments, aromatherapy purports to work on the whole body: the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and wallet. Aroma does play a part, but therapeutic claims also include the application of oils on the skin and, to a lesser extent, ingestion. Like most other alternative medicines, aromatherapy relies solely on "natural" ingredients—no synthetics or preservatives are invited—to soothe the psyche and cure the cooties in an earthy sort of way. Aromatherapy's main ingredients are plant-derived essential oils, which can offer a magical band-aid for all physical and psychological disorders under Aquarius, from asthma to zirconium poisoning.

For some, alternative medicines complement the mainstream medicine and therapeutic practices that gained their dubious reputations by actually curing diseases and offering relief. To be fair, since holistic treatments are held in such high regard, there must be hundreds of peer-reviewed studies available, especially if it's on equal footing with quirky, unpredictable, pie-in-the-sky conventional medicine. So start your studies' scavenger hunt now and call me with your list in a few days. Not to worry; if you don't find any, just invent them.

One of aromatherapy's undisputed selling points is its historical roots. Practitioners of, and believers in, holistic medicine forever embrace the overly romantic idea that there's some cosmic connection among mind, body, spirit, and environment, a biopsychosocial sphere (say it fast five times) that somehow promotes a healthy life. In other words, simply stated, natural plants are good for you, such as tobacco.

It's apparently logical for some to think that if the "natural" substances distilled from plants, shrubs, flowers, trees, roots, bushes, or seeds worked for the advanced cultures from thousands of years ago, why not us? Hell, why can't our life expectancy be the mid-30's, too?

Of course, essential oils have a much more romantic image than some of the alternative treatments ancient Egyptian physicians might have recommended to their patients, such as magic potions, animal dung, fly droppings and cooked mice.(I'd mention magical amulets, but they're currently for sale on the internet.) To say the least, there must have been a colorful hodgepodge of merchandise in their pharmacies.

Unlike today, diseases then were thought to be caused by pissing off the gods, who would, in turn, give you such a pinch. Ah, the good old days, when pig entrails were sometimes used to predict the future. If there's one issue we can agree on it's that although we can admire much about the ancients' accomplishments, medical cures ain't one of them.

The roots, then, of aromatherapy, date back to more than 4,000 years ago. India and Egypt have been widely accepted as the countries where it originated. Both civilizations used these essential oils for bathing, massages, and cosmetics. Their curative properties, the ones in abundance today, weren't appreciated back then.

For illnesses, they relied on tried-and-true curatives, such as prayers, rituals, and sacrificing goats, which are still practiced the world over today, minus the goat sacrifice. For pain relief, herbs were preferred. Since diseases and deaths were acts of crabby, grouchy gods, magic was employed to please them, along with a lute-and-lyre rock concert now and then. Aromatic-type fumes were also a part of peoples' daily lives, to the point of being sacred.

Uses for essential oils were eventually passed down to the Greek and Romans, possibly for treating tunic and toga chafing. Greek and Roman physicians were the first to apply these oils to treat infections, although their success was dubious. Hippocrates' writings recommended aromatic baths and oily massages as practices for good health. Some Greek physicians treated wounded gladiators with botanical remedies. With all those gods hanging around creating mischief, you'd have thought that at least one would have introduced an antibiotic or something.

The Black Plague struck in the late 1340s. Theories about its origins included angry gods, planetary alignments, and evil stares. When it was finally over, by some estimates, up to two-thirds of the European population had died. Botanical remedies were tried, with no success. They had failed the ultimate test and temporarily fell out of favor. For some reason, prayers survived intact.

Finally during the 19th century, after millions of years of unnecessary human suffering, some gods or god finally decided to let scientists in on a little secret: diseases are caused by microbes. This discovery led to the introduction of a number of life-saving practices, such as sanitation, injections, disease prevention, antibiotics and modern medicine in general. As was to be expected, it dampened the enthusiasm for essential-oil remedies; they were placed in Museum for Questionable Cures, alongside bloodletting and animal urine.

As you'll see, however, it's hard to keep an attractive, persistent pseudoscience down. In 1928 French chemist and perfumist Rene-Maurice Gattefosse led a revival in aromatherapy. As the story goes, while working in the lab, probably on Chanel #1, a fire burnt Gattefosse's arm. Quickly, he dipped it into the nearest vat filled with what he assumed was H2O. As fate would have it, it was lavender oil. Luckily for the nutty professor, it wasn't hydrochloric acid. According to Gattefosse his pain immediately subsided and his burns healed quicker than expected, with very little scarring.

With this painstaking, meticulous, 30-second, Gattefosse-reviewed "experiment" completed, he wrote an article touting the benefits of essential oils and coined the term "aromatherapy" after rejecting the term "rene-mauricegattefossetherapy."

Was Gattefosse's burn checked by a physician? What degree burn did he have? Who confirmed the burns? Who knows? Apparently, history is relying on variations of this pleasant little tale. In any case, Gattefosse spent the rest of his life studying and promoting aromatherapy, including its anti-microbial effects, more commonly known as wishful thinking.

In 1937 he published the quintessential aromatherapy book with a lengthy French title, which was trimmed-down in the English version to Gattefosse's Aromatherapy (still available today). He's considered to be the father of aromatherapy.

Although Britain and France, along with other countries in the eastern hemisphere, embraced this new therapy over the next several years, it wasn't until the 1980's when New Age Americans were first snookered.

For the ancients, it made some sense that plants and shrubs might prove beneficial. After all, humans needed plants to live. Essential oils might have seemed logical to those who had no idea that diseases were caused by microbes or genetic disorders. What else made sense, "Here, take two rocks, pray to some invisible grump, and get plenty of rest"?

Since many of these essential oils have been available for at least 4000 years, one would think that by now there'd be universal agreement on their effectiveness based on scientific testing. You'd be wrong. In fact, no supposed "cure" from the ancients survives today, unless you believe prayer is going to clear up your genital warts.

Current practitioners of aromatherapy have concocted dozens of different oily products to relieve stress, invigorate the body, cure diseases, and lubricate a door hinge. Generally, the essential oil is mixed with a neutral oil (like vegetable oil) and massaged into the body (to be absorbed through the skin), added to bathwater, inhaled, or ingested (not generally recommended).

According to aromatherapists, purity is required for good therapeutic results; no synthetics or preservatives need apply. In other words, only the manufacturers have the proper equipment to extract the substances to produce the pure, high-quality oils. And, surprisingly, the best oils come from organic plants you can't ordinarily grow in your backyard. Otherwise, we'd simply be able to pick a bunch of geraniums from our gardens and cure just about anything after running them through our juicers.

The list of beneficial oils and their endless uses is confusing and, frankly, embarrassing. Depending on which aroma-therapist you reference — it's not an exact science (or exactly a science) — different oils will allegedly treat different maladies. As one aromatherapist claims, "There is a plant for every illness."

Following is only a fraction of various disorders and their oily treatments: insomnia, congestion and colds (basil); antiseptic, toothaches, and respiratory infections (clove); skin infections (eucalyptus); ulcers, skin care, laryngitis (frankincense); kidney stones, calming effect on the nervous system (geraniums); stomach acidity (lemon); headaches, fevers, colds (mint); and sedative (orange). Lavender and geranium oils are also purported to be antimicrobial agents.

If you need some psychological aromatherapy, try these: easing of anger (chamomile); promoting alertness (eucalyptus); calming, relieving pain (lavender); insomnia (mandarin orange blossom); anxiety and stress (ylang-ylang...goes the trolley).

In addition, unsubstantiated biophysical actions include stimulation of cellular activity and activation of capillary circulation, elimination of toxins, and oxygenation of blood, helping the body to heal itself, relieving pain, reversing constipation, energizing the sympathetic nervous system, and improving your ability to play the harmonica.

One "study" even "proved" that penile blood flow is increased by the combined scents of lavender and pumpkin pie. Instead of only watching football, men would have something else to do on Thanksgiving Day.

Since New-Age adherents are generally insatiable "energy" junkies, they necessarily apply the concept to aromatherapy. Once again there's discussion of some vague, ubiquitous "energy field" emanating from the human body. However, it's not actually the oils' chemicals that are reacting with the human "energy field," but it's the plant oils' "life force" that will neutralize or shoo away the nagging, negative energy vibrations from our bodies. You see, essential oils have a "spiritual dimension." They restore "balance" and "harmony" to one's body and to one's life. The needle on the wacky meter is straining past the 180-degree mark.

It's also purported that some oils may influence our "chakras," seven vortexes and whirling balls of energy in the human body related to our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being; that is, if they're open and spinning at the same rate to each other. And I thought all that activity was just my stomach grumbling.

If the wacky meter hasn't shattered just yet, another "theory" floating around in the ether is that essential oils may involve some kind of bio-electrical frequency. How long will it be before we're not only tip-toeing through the tulips, but talking to them, too?

Let's see: energy fields...life forces...negative energy... positive energy...bio-electrical frequencies...chakras. Excuse the momentary digression but should we be paying teachers more? Maybe smaller class sizes? School dress codes?

One problem with aromatherapy as a feel-good, rediscovered substitute for, or complement to, standard medicine is that almost all available evidence is anecdotal, which is mostly pseudoscientific "proof." But for many people, stories are exciting, statistics suck. At best, other than the placebo effect, there's insufficient proof of the effectiveness of aromatherapy; that is, unless you discovered something on your scavenger hunt.

Can aromatherapy at least make a scientific claim that smells can relax us? Perhaps. Most can agree that pleasant smells can produce positive responses. Pine, for example, may remind someone of the joys of Christmas. On the other hand, it might remind someone else that grandma got run over by a reindeer.

Certain aromas may change the way we breathe; calm breathing calms the mind. Since some legitimate studies have connected stress to heart disease and even cancer, relaxing isn't a bad thing. Not many of us, however, can surround ourselves with pleasant-smelling oils 24/7. Even with a lemon hanging from your rearview mirror, the octogenarian who cuts you off in traffic is going to immediately send adrenaline coursing through your chakras.

The aroma in aromatherapy can also be part of a pleasant ritual. Go ahead, start up your bathtub, light a forest of scented candles, pour some pleasant-smelling essential oils in the warm water, lie back, and enjoy. Just don't expect the experience to resolve your restless-leg syndrome. But do consumers really need to be told and sold what smells swell? And is the previous question rhetorical?

Also, a massage with essential oils can be a relaxing experience; that is, unless it's the type of massage where law enforcement might raid the premises. But will the oils your skin absorbs actually help to kill bacteria and viruses and stimulate the body's immune system? Maybe on Atlantis.

So, what's the harm if people believe in aromatherapy's nonexistent health benefits? Besides another stick in the eye of critical thinking, they can be dangerous. Certain essential oils can produce serious allergic reactions in certain people. When combined with some legitimate prescriptions, the oils can prove harmful, even fatal. A number of people have refused curative traditional medicine and instead embraced alternative treatments, which killed them. Some essential oils are toxic if ingested. Looking on the sunny side of life, it may be nature's way of thinning the herd.

And how do you know if an aromatherapist is legitimate? Good freaking luck. No government-issued certification or license is required. Neither aromatherapy nor essential oils are regulated by the government. If you cut or style hair, however, you must be licensed. Not surprisingly, alternative medicine schools not only boast classes in oils, massage techniques, etc., but also on starting businesses and marketing.

Is aromatherapy considered a complementary or alternative medicine (CAM)? Both. The recent emphasis on the word "complementary" is obviously an attempt to give the movement more legitimacy. It's easier to expose a worthless, stand-alone treatment (alternative) than a worthless treatment that complements an authentic one. Was it the massage or morphine that relieved the pain? For some, the answer is obvious; for others, a good friend of mine is selling magical amulets.

Regardless, aromatherapy continues to be big business. Aromatherapy oils, bath gels, soaps, teas, dried flowers, and lotions are popping up everywhere, crying out for our maxed-out charge cards. Essential oils are found in homes, clinics, beauty salons and spas. Aromatherapists are flourishing. CAM books are selling like chakra candles. The list grows on and on.

Once in awhile, folks, take a deep breath and think. You don't need to be a Mensa member to understand that almost everything about the complementary and alternative medicine movement in general, and the aromatherapy movement more specifically, smells fishy.

Humorist Paul DesOrmeaux teaches writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Monroe Community College. His goal is to introduce skepticism to a broader audience by combining reason and science with humor/satire to expose myths, pseudoscience, fraudulent claims, and nonsensical ideas.

Dr. Barry Beyerstein

It was with great sadness that we at Bay Area Skeptics learned of the death of Dr. Barry L. Beyerstein. Barry was a long time friend to us and was unconditionally supportive of rationality and critical thinking and his lectures were brilliant in their clarity and humor. In 2006, Dr. Beyerstein spoke to a full house at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on the subject of Anomalistic Psychology and followed that talk up a day later with a dinner talk to Bay Area Skeptics on the subject of untested Far Eastern medical practices that have acquired common acceptance in North America. Always, he spoke in a language immediately accessible to all and he showed remarkable patience and kindness to detractors who questioned his scientific findings. Although patient and kind, he was also consistently well-prepared and he was more than a match for those in his audience who took offense at this conclusions.

We will miss Barry Beyerstein. He was a gentle man who shown a constant light of reason in the darkness of superstition and ignorance. Please see below another appreciation of his impact on science.

Tragic death of an eminent skeptic — Barry Beyerstein (1947–2007)

My wife Noirin and I heard last night of the tragic death of Barry Beyerstein. Words cannot express our shock and distress at the news. We have had the great pleasure of meeting Barry and his wife Suzi at a number of skeptics conferences across Europe. They were a charming and deeply commited couple, full of fun and enthusiasm. Barry was to present a paper at the ECSO congress in Dublin in September and we have been in regular e-mail contact lately. He and Suzi were due to arrive in Dublin a week or so prior to the congress and we had planned to spend some time together viewing the sites and enjoying the restaurants and pubs. He was very much looking forward to this visit.

Barry has written extensively on a wide range of topics. He was a staunch defender of the integrity of science and traveled the world promoting science and critical thinking. In Dublin he was to address the issue of science versus pseudoscience, a topic on which he has expressed strong and incisive views.

We have lost a great man at a tragically early age. He had so much more to contribute and we will miss his leadership and example.

On behalf of myself, Noirin and all the members of the Irish Skeptics Society I extend our deepest condolences and heartfelt sorrow to Suzi and the family and to their relatives and close friends who have been devastated by this awful event.