"Worried about a hangover? No problem, now Swedish doctors have developed an effective medicine that makes you feel well the day after! This is the message brought to you by Revigör advertisement."
"Revigör comes at a price of 50 SEK and each box contains three pills which ingredients are vitamins, sugar, salt and coffein. But there are no proofs of living up to it's claims."
These are the main things the scientists point out.
First, to have been developed by a Doctor Haglund, yet this person has not published any scientific articles or papers regarding the effect of alcohol. Although Revigör claims that he "has dedicated his life" to the effects of alcohol.
Secondly, Revigör claims to be "a result of Swedish research" and "to have been tested and shown good results in a double-blind placecontrolled study done by doctors from Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University". Yet, no such study has ever been published. The scientists contacted the owner of the company that produces Revigör and asked for the study. He replied that it was a company secret and that they only share it with business partners. All that are familiar with how science in all forms in conducted, know that you can never make any claims related to an unpublished study. You can't just say "I have proof, but I won't show it". The scientists then point out that it's of economic interest to the company whether or not the study is correct and that one therefore could doubt their motives on keeping it secret.
The scientists the proceed to explaining how it is possible to sell a product that has scientific claims of medical effect and no proofs, in Sweden. This is due to the company labeling their product as vitamins and nutritions instead of medicine. Thus bypassing the Swedish laws and regulations on medicinal products.
Lastly the scientists implies that a people taking medication against hang-overs might be more likely to drink more. They supply no proof of this, but argues that this is not something of good. Especially since Revigör can be sold to people already drunk and that Revigör states "Revigör should not be used to increace alcohol consumption".
It all seems rather well, until Svenska Dagbladet decides to make an article regarding this. They choose "Scientists warns about hangover medicine" as a headline, the original headline was "Hangover medicine is a scam". Thus doing the classic "Scientists warn of X", which is rather popular in the Swedish press. The article mainly focuses on a very poor statement made by Fredrik Spak, one of the scientists. He says "To fool consumers into believing that they can drink any amount of alcohol without the effects of a hangover can in the end lead to addiction", this part, I can't understand. This is not at all what is claimed in the original article, no mention of addiction is made. Either Spak is out of his league and making claims he can not back up or the journlist at SvD has screwed up totally when quoting him (which judging by the rest of the article is not entirely unlikely).
This, however spurred a couple of angry comments by readers and several bloggers have commented on "The evil scientists, who think drinking is bad". All this because of one statement and the fact that SvD switches the focus from the "medicine" being a scam to it being harmful. I have never experienced such a poorly written article. The original article consists to about 80% on debunking the claims of Revigör and about 10% to any possible effects a false medicine might have. Then why does the SvD article consist of the opposite proportions? Also, why does the readers immediately think that the scientists are against them drinking? At no point does any of them say that they shouldn't drink, the only comment is the one of Spark which is totally irrational. I believe that this big mess is partially SvD's fault. Do they have a science part of the paper? Did they even read the first article made by the scientists? I don't have a job for this summer and if SvD needs someone to help them establist some basic understanding on how to write articles about science and even more important, how to keep true to an original article. I am free, and not that expensive.
Now, due to bad journalism the only scientific fact is lost. Revigör makes scientific claims, yet cannot support them. Thus making it a perfect example of pseudoscience. And yet... why is neither the journalists at SvD or the Swedish bloggers upset about being lied to?
Links:
The original article in GP (in Swedish)
The article made on the subject by SvD (in Swedish)
Revigörs homepage (in Swedish)
1 comment:
Finally I have found someone who´s made a sober analysis of the two different articles. Sadly I have to add that this is not the first time SvD´s pretentions to analyse science fail.
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