LifeWave part III: Things get strange

As I mentioned in my previous post on my battle against LifeWave, I have submitted a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa. There was some correspondence back and forth in order to establish exactly what the details of my complaint were, but it has now been scheduled for investigation. That means we should hear a result in the next few weeks. These things take time.

In the mean-time, however, I have been receiving some correspondence from a Gordon Compson, who identifies himself as an "Independent LifeWave Consultant". I haven't responded to him privately since the only place he could have found me was through this blog. I decided that even though he was clearly too cowardly to leave a public comment on my blog itself, I would respond to his messages here, for all of you to see.

The first email I received was as follows:

Sure there are skeptics... I was too until I tried them, maybe you should too!

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/the-power-of-the-patch/3704020534

That scam site has been running since we started..it's amazing what the drug companies will do to shoot us down & keep people from trying us.

We're getting lots of the Asian market now because that understand the technology more than the US. I'm in NY and have Malaysian down line using the patches because I helped one girl sleep better by sending her some samples! Video Search Results - Lifewave - AOL Video

Send me your address & I'll send you some info that will set your mind free if they work or not.

Gordon Compson Independent Lifewave consultant ... www.Lifewave.com/energyguy

*Sigh*

Okay, let's do it one line at a time:

Sure there are skeptics... I was too until I tried them, maybe you should too!

Gordon, I have absolutely no reason to believe that you have experienced any positive effects from using the Nanopatch. Even if you had furnished me with the details of your anecdote, it would still be an anecdote. Anecdote does not equal evidence.

That scam site has been running since we started..it's amazing what the drug companies will do to shoot us down & keep people from trying us.

What scam site? lifewave.com? YouTube? My blog? Note the thinly veiled conspiracy theory he sneaked in there.

If the drug companies really thought you posed any threat to them, they would have bought LifeWave out, or reverse-engineered your devices and released their own versions. The drug companies aren't interested in you, Gordon. Nor should they be.

Dealing with your kind of idiocy shouldn't be the responsibility of the real scientists who have important work to do, but rather the sceptics and consumer protection organisations - like me, JREF, the ASASA and USS Dauntless SciOps.

We're getting lots of the Asian market now because that understand the technology more than the US. I'm in NY and have Malaysian down line using the patches because I helped one girl sleep better by sending her some samples!

It's fascinating that you are selling your scam products in Asia. Of course I have no way of verifying that, and you haven't provided any proof of it. Also, you will notice that I live in neither Asia nor the United States. So your Appeal to Authority (the logical fallacy you have committed here) falls a little flat.

Also, it doesn't matter how many people buy it. Billions of people buy cigarettes every day. Does that mean they're good for you? What matters is data. Give us the data, and we might believe you.

Here's something interesting. You used the term "down line" and call yourself an "Independent consultant". That sounds like MLM terminology to me. So you are using a scam to perpetuate another? Nothing new: scam products often can't cut it in the open market, so they must rely on the viral marketing techniques employed by pyramid schemes.

Who is the little girl you helped? What is her name? Where are the clinical results of the study you performed? Where are the results of all the other little girls you have similarly helped using the same technique? More to the point, what about all the other people who have not been helped in any way by using your product? What is the success/failure rate?

Send me your address & I'll send you some info that will set your mind free if they work or not.

I'll not send you my address, Gordon. That doesn't seem to have prevented you from sending me emails though. This website provides a perfectly good forum for this discussion. If you really can "set my mind free", you can do it here.

Gordon sent me two more emails that were even less coherent than the one above, providing lists of links to more anecdotal accounts, marketing videos clearly produced by LifeWave themselves and some people claiming to be reformed sceptics. I may reproduce them here at some point, but I trust I've made my point: I am unconvinced and unimpressed.

You'll need to do better than that, Gordon.