Phony science

"Here comes the science bit..."

I've become a bit of a fan of Bad Science dot net, where recently they discussed how 'Brain Gym' use nonsense 'neuroscience-speak' to hawk their snake oil wares.

That works in regular marketing too. Recently I've been jotting down science-sounding words from shampoo and make up ads because I'm sure they're getting more frequent. Here's some sci-marketing mumbo-jumbo designed to trick you into buying fancy hair soap:

"light-reflecting booster technology"
"protein pearls"
"penta-peptides"
"next generation pro-V formulation"
"enriched with neutrilium"

It's all very canny. We want technology and formulations and to be part of the next generation. And the main reason we want all that is because we're idiots and we think we're worth it.