Magic Bracelet Power?

There is a particular type of nonsense that has made a few in roads into the culture recently.
It's the powerbalance bracelet.

These useless pieces of junk seem be rather popular. They seem to benefit greatly from testimonials by sports stars and celebrities. And as far as I can tell. This seems to be the only thing they have going for them in terms of their advertising.

So how do they work and what do they do?

Well. According to their website. "Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body."
"Power Balance is Performance Technology designed to work with your body’s natural energy field. Founded by athletes, Power Balance is a favorite among elite athletes for whom balance, strength and flexibility are important."

Do I really need to point out that this is pure nonsense?

They never bother to specify what this "hologram" they mention is. A hologram is an image. It's nothing more than that. The idea that an image can do anything to have a physical effect on your body is absurd. When this idea gets mixed with the claim that the body has some form of energy field that can be altered and manipulated...
This kind of viatalistic energy medicine crops up again and again in quack medicine. Therapeutic touch is perhaps the most prominent example. This kind of thinking is indeed based upon ancient "Eastern philosophies". The thing about such notions are that these philosophies of healing were developed in pre-scientific times when almost nothing true or useful was known about the Human body.

In my last blog I touched on the notion of logical fallacies. These are failures in logic that make the conclusion of the argument suspect. One such logical fallacy is the argument from antiquity. This usually goes as such. Some thing was used by some ancient culture. Therefore they must have had some special knowledge that we don't and thus this special thing is true.

This is obviously not a sound line of reasoning. Ancient cultures were certainly far less advanced in medical knowledge than western, science based, medicine is today.

The entire basis of this product is just complete and utter rubbish. I'm going to end this with a firm debunking of the type of demonstrations that are usually offered up as proof of effectiveness for these crap products.

This is done by Richard Saunders of the Australian Skeptics.       



In conclusion these bracelets and pendants are a scam. And not a cheap one. Any time a product makes claims about improving balance, strength, flexibility, stamina, concentration, circulation, wellness ect through the manipulation of some kind of energy field or similar. Be skeptical.