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

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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

Shame on You, Jenny Craig for Hawking Your "Breaking News," "Best Program" BS!!!

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Advertising is legalized lying. --H. G. Wells When I wrote the May 12, 2011, article Shame on You, Consumer Reports , I was careful not to include Jenny Craig in any negative way, for JC did not make the decision to use the Jenny Craig sponsored trial "Effect of a Free Prepared Meal and Incentivized Weight Loss Program on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance in Obese and Overweight Women" to decide "the best" program, but, rather, to test long-term efficacy of diet programs that provide both food and program fees to members for free. I even stressed the following: ...this article is not meant to disparage the Jenny Craig Program, which may be a fine program; I have never been a Jenny Craig member. My issue is with Consumer Reports and its research source for its rating of Jenny Craig. I believed (and still believe) that the underlying objective of the research was to prove that overall program efficacy and members' overall health would improve if

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment