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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool.
--Richard Feynman, California Institute of Technology physicist and Nobel laureate
I violated Feynman's first principle during a recent book tour. I traveled daily through congested airports, crowded jets and crammed bookstores amid sneezing, coughing, germ-infested multitudes. One day, while squeezed into the sardine section of coach, with the guy behind me obeying the command of the germs in his lungs to go forth and multiply, I cursed myself for having forgotten my Airborne tablets, an orange-flavored effervescent concoction of herbs, antioxidants, electrolytes and amino acids that fizzles into action in a glass of water.
In the logic-tight compartments of my brain, my magic module had trumped my skeptic module. I had not given this product any thought until, much to my chagrin, the host for one of my tour stops, a Menlo Park, Calif., Internet venture capitalist and science blogger named David Cowan, mentioned that recently he had debunked Airborne on his blog (http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com). A science-savvy investor, Cowan was quick to spot the clever marketing technique of suggesting that Airborne prevents or cures colds without actually saying so. "Take at the FIRST sign of a cold symptom or before entering crowded environments," the instructions say. Then "repeat every three hours as necessary." In the (really) fine print, however, is this: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."
Even more troublesome is how the company turned a liability into an asset. Most drugs are developed by Big Pharma--Brobdingnagian corporations with vast teams of scientists who have, to date, failed to cure the common cold. Airborne's creator is "Knight-McDowell Labs"--Victoria Knight-McDowell is a schoolteacher and her husband, Rider McDowell, is a scriptwriter. Instead of hiding their lack of credentials, they boast about them on their Web page (www.airbornehealth.com): CREATED BY A SECOND-GRADE SCHOOL TEACHER! "As any confidence artist knows," Cowan explains in his blog, "disclosing unflattering facts up front wins the target's trust." And $100 million in annual sales is all the data the lab needs.
Annual sales of $100 million are all the data the lab needs.
As for real scientific evidence on Airborne, the Web page used to provide a link to "clinical results" (no longer there). When Cowan wrote to the company for the information, he received this reply: "The 2003 trial was a small study conducted for what was then a small company. While it yielded very strong results, we feel that the methodology (protocol) employed is not consistent with our current product usage recommendations. Therefore, we no longer make it available to the public." Why? The company CEO, Elise Donahue, told ABC News: "We found that it confused consumers. Consumers are really not scientifically minded enough to be able to understand a clinical study."
ABC News looked into the clinical trial and discovered that it was conducted by GNG Pharmaceutical Services, "a two-man operation started up just to do the Airborne study. There was no clinic, no scientists and no doctors. The man who ran things said he had lots of clinical trial experience. He added that he had a degree from Indiana University, but the school says he never graduated."
In one final lunge at product verisimilitude (dang it, that zesty taste feels like it works), I consulted Harriet Hall, a retired U.S. Air Force flight surgeon and family physician who studies alternative medicine. Hall looked up Airborne's ingredients in the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database and found no evidence that any of the ingredients prevents colds. Worse, vitamin A is unsafe in doses greater than 10,000 units a day, and Airborne contains 5,000 units per tablet and recommends five pills a day or more. The only positive finding was for vitamin C, for which some evidence indicates that taking high doses may shorten the duration of cold symptoms by one to one and a half days in some patients. But the large amounts needed may cause side effects. "There's more evidence for chicken soup than for Airborne," Hall told me. "In the absence of any credible double-blind studies to support the claims for Airborne, I'll stick to hand washing."
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15 Comments
Add CommentYou're wrong - the package recommends no more than three tablets a day, and you said they recommend five or more. Do your homework.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAirborne just has vitamins in it and vitamins generally prevent you from getting sick so I don't think Airborne is any different or less effective than taking vitamins. I only take one tablet every once in a while, when I'm feeling a bit under the weather, and whether it's just the placebo effect or not, I haven't been seriously sick in quite some time. Thus, I say, go Airborne! :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Airborne package that I am currently reading shows 2000 IU for vitamin A per tablet vs 5000 IU mentioned in the article. At 3 maximum tablets per day recommended, that works out to 6000 units.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe vitamin A content on the latest package is 2000 IU, making the daily dose 6000 IU, vs 10,000 IU in the article, at 3 max tablets per day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGive it up man, it's a vitamin that's all. People are just complete fools for advertising. That's all. It's like taking a shot of wheat grass, or high dose of vit c for colds...NOT a huge scandle. jeeez
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have usually problems with nose congestion and develop strong nasal catarrh when I am on long flights. ( Probably, the airlines do not filter the air as they should ... ! ) I heard of Airborne from some friends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYesterday, I bought a pack and took 3 tablets, as recommended, prior and during a 7 hour flight.
Today I am fine, no nose problems, nothing !
It may be a concidence, but, , over the last 3 - 4 years, I was never on any long distance flight without getting the initially described nose problems.
So, I will continue trying and using it until the first pack is used up. Tomorrow I will fly from LA to Europe ( that is an 11 hour flight ) and that will be another test. I will keep you updated !
Ullemann
As forecast in my previous message, I used Airborn again on my last flight from LAX to FRA = 11 hours in a plane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI took Airborn and, again, I did not have the nose problems that I had previously on long flights.
It may have been again a coincidence - or United is filtering the air better than other airlines ( the last one where I had real problems was Lufthansa and I remember the 9 hrs flight from FRA to ORD as a "torture" ! ).
Also, I have bought in the meantime Walborn = the Walgreen version, with the same/similar formula. When I have finished the original Airborn, I will then use the Walborn product.
I will keep this forum updated on my further experiences.
Ullemann
still stupid after reading the above news...GOD BLESS AMERICA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAirborne has worked for my family for 7 straight years. My father was a UC Davis nutritionist, and he looked up the herbal component and thought it very effective. Why has this effective simple product caused such a firestorm? The big lobbying firms for the drug companies must be hard at work trying to debunk a genuinely effective product.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDanajaeger, if it actually worked, don't you think one of the big drug companies would have bought the rights to Airborne by now, if not the entire company? The product is a cash cow because gullible people are willing to fork over money hand over fist to a small company, even if their product doesn't do what it says. If a big drug company bought Airborne, the public wouldn't accept the "trust us, it just works" claim any more. They would have to put their money where their mouth is, and run clinical trials to prove the claims. Airborne gets away with not having to do this, because, hey she's a school teacher, she must be honest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point is not that Airborne is just vitamins. The point is that these vitamins have all been extensively studied and have no preventative effects against the common cold. That's why Airborne's marketing is deceptive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the two commenters who wrote about how they took Airborne and didn't get a cold, how do you know that you wouldn't have gotten a cold even if you didn't take anything at all? This lack of a control (comparison group) is one of the real problems with anecdotes, as <a href="http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=33">this article</a> discusses thoroughly.
Bah! Complete science garbage! I've been using Airborne for 15 years! It's wonderful! It's cured my cancer AND given me hair again! I don't care that you used research and "sources" to make this article fac-tu-al. I know what I know, and I know Airborne works! I konw this regardless of any common sense, or scientific fact you can throw at me! -And of course I will continue to tell you that the vitamin A dosage in your article is wrong, even though the whole point of the article was to "convince" me that Airborne is "ineffective."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason the "big drug companies" haven't bought this up yet is because it doesn't contain "drugs!" DUH!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article only works to show that the creator of Airborne has little to no experience with matters of nutrition and such, which doesnt even matter because it doesnt take a genius to throw a bunch of nutrients that are fairly well known to work synergistically together for various health benefits (additionally they could of just got help from a bio/chem head or copied products like emergen-c)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, it is apparent that the author of this article has little to no knowledge on how many of these nutrients and vitamins work. Instead of going through and talking about what particular ingredients do, the author tries to look for 'which ingredient cures the common cold', which obviously will turn up no results as there is no cure for the cold, and it doesnt claim it will absolutely annihilate every cold virus.
Many of the ingredients within airbone and similar products such as Emergen-c are strong anti-oxidants, such as Vitamin-C, and for those of you who dont know what an anti oxidant does, they get rid of superoxides, aka freeradicals, which much research has as pretty much the major cause of cancer, heart disease (bad cholesteral is nothing more than oxidized cholesteral from free radicals, not the result of over-fat/cholesteral consumption).
There is benefits to most of the nutrients added to airbone, though I question them adding Amino acids as most people do not need supplementation of essential AA, they dont even have branch chain AA (BCAAs) in it.
I also question their inclusion of fat soluble vitamin A, this is generally not a good idea to put fat soluble vitamins in something that people generally overconsume. Fat soluble vitamins can accumulate in toxic quantities in the fat within cells, whereas water soluble vitamins are just peed out.
The argument that 'these statements were not approved by the FDA' is pretty weak. There is tons of positive research on many of the nutrients in airbone. The FDA is a horribly poor government agency; they are slow and often wrong, and are often heavily lobbied by big corporations to get them to say what they want (for example, FDA doesnt require thorough/frequent bottled water testing and as a result, it is a fact bottle watered contains more contaminants and carcinogens than tap water).
Im not pro Airborne necessarily by any means, one could probably do to just buy the individual vitamins at gnc for cheap, I just think this article works to falsely mislead people away from product that is very beneficial to someones health, even as a daily supplement and not just preventative.
I am skeptical too of the claims, especially having lived my entire life with an MD in the home. My father is a surgeon who believes chiropractors are quacks and my husband a dermatologist who isn't too keen on alternative treatments. However, this winter my family experienced flu-like symptoms, including fevers and upper respiratory symptoms, within a week. All but one of my teenage daughters became ill and is the only one who started taking airborne when her little brothers initially came down with it. We all live in the same household (6 kids and 2 parents), and everyone else got sick, even her identical twin sister. I may try Airborne next time. It's not completely for morons. Big pharmaceutical companies aren't coming to our office and offering us free products and dinners because they like us so much. They have a product to sell and will do what they must to look good and get doctors to prescribe their drug. Sometimes it works, and sometimes things get better regardless.
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