Posts

Showing posts with the label Shame on You Consumer Reports and...

Breaking News! Consumer Reports Offers a Lame Response to the Critics of the Diet Program Rankings

Image
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals. --David Ogilvy The critics are finally discovering what I posted about last month about Consumer Reports' ranking of diet programs . Meanwhile, the media machine has already spread the "best" program "news" like a virus. The Google search term "Jenny Craig Best Program" (with quotes) has returned (as of June 7) about 47,000 results. Very few "critical" entries of the Consumer Reports diet program rankings. No exact results for the terms "critics of diet ratings" or "critics of diet rating." Nothing for "critics of Jenny Craig diet rating." Zip for "critics of Consumer Reports diet rating" and zero for "critics of Consumer Reports diet ratings." But buried within the rah, rah po

Thought for the Day--May 12, 2011: Shame on You, Consumer Reports and How About a Refresher Course in Research Methodology 101?

Image
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. --Attributed to Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911) What gave [Jenny Craig] the edge over the big names we assessed--stalwarts such as Atkins, Ornish, and Weight Watchers--was a 332-person [actually, it was a 442-person study], two-year study of the program published in the Oct. 27, 2010, Journal of the American Medical Association. [Title of article, which was omitted from CR's ratings or its accompanying article: "Effect of a Free Prepared Meal and Incentivized Weight Loss Program on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance in Obese and Overweight Women," by Cheryl L. Rock, PhD, RD, et al, and published online on Oct. 9, 2010.] ...Jenny Craig's prepared food was decent, though not great, as we noted in "Diet Taste-off" in our February 2011 issue. --"Pick your ideal diet," Consumer Reports , June 2011, page 14, after selecting Jenny Craig as the number 1 diet (Score

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment