 Welcome to another edition of The Randy's Show. I am the James Randy Educational Foundation's field coordinator, Brian Thompson, and with me as always is James Randy. How are you doing today, Mr. Randy? Well, a little, a little tired and it's a little gray outside, but what the heck? When you got, uh, Brian on the other end, you know, you can't be all grumpy about the world. You're the only person who's ever said that. Well, I, it may be true, it might be true, we'll, we'll find out. It doesn't matter. Um, okay, so we're talking about snake oil, specifically we're talking about, uh, a bit of a trouble that the website Groupon ran into. If you're not familiar with it, Groupon is a community coupon site. Um, I don't really understand how it works. Basically, it seems to me like it's a bunch of people ganging up and demanding deals from various companies, but does it exist and does it work and it doesn't function? Is it just a name, a cute name? I wonder. I don't know, but apparently, uh, they were offering a coupon for this brand of skin cream that claims that, uh, it'll tighten up your skin and reduce your wrinkles because it contains an approximation of the venom of the temple viper, which is a kind of snake. Uh, so in other words, they were selling, literally selling snake oil and, uh, they got into some trouble with the British advertising standards agency, which said they couldn't sell this type of thing or they couldn't promote this type of thing because its claims haven't been proven in human testing. Now, where do you get the oil from the snake? Do they have oil glands someplace that you squeeze or, or that they squeeze? I don't want to do it, but, uh, or is it by rendering the snake down into a stew or something like that, masquerading it or putting it into a blender and putting the oil flow to the top? And there's no description of what this is, but what was the technical term that they use there? Well, they say that it is not actually snake venom, but it's a formula that replicates the snake's venom. They say, they're marketing it as an alternative to Botox. The company that makes it is called Skin Chemists and the product itself is called Wrinkle Killer Snake Serum and, uh, they say that the active ingredient is a neuropeptide which reduces muscle contraction and therefore smooths out your skin. I think if I were to get a reason to be hotter and I could smooth out their skin for them, I'd like to put them on an ironing board and see how well that works and see if we get some hollers from them. I don't understand what the advertising council's problem is here. Um, is this any better than other stuff that is being sold by boats, pharmacies and other places all over the world? I don't understand the difference. Why did they come out against this particular thing? It's a good question and it's something that Groupon seems to have questioned as well. Uh, specifically they said that they thought that they were in the okay or in the all clear because this particular product didn't claim to have any sort of permanent effect. It was a temporary effect. And according to a statement that Groupon made to the register, they said that the product itself, whether or not it works for the reasons it says it works, it actually does moisturize your skin and give it the appearance of smoothing out. So, uh, they thought that that would be perfectly fine. But apparently, uh, that's not perfectly fine according to the advertising standards agency. And like you said, that raises some question about why other things like homeopathic medicine, for instance, that haven't been proven in clinical trials, uh, why those things are allowed. I, I, I don't know. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you. That's a question for the ASA. This may be one slimming effect. If I take the cash out of my wallet here and I fold it, oh, it's much thinner now, you see, that may be the slimming effect they're, they're speaking of. I suspect that it's probably more like that. I, I don't, I don't see what all the fuss is that's being made. It's, it either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't work, it's another one of those swindles. But why would that get anybody's particular attention? Get them all excited. Maybe because it has something to do with snake venom, venom, or temple vipers. Maybe the temple vipers should be left to do whatever temple vipers do. I guess they slither around. I don't know. I might not meet one for the rest of my life. But yeah, there might be one more wrinkle to this story. Hi. Wrinkle. Definitely. In words, there he is. Yeah, apparently another aspect of this is that the ingredient that they say is the active ingredient in this product is unknown to the ASA, or at least they said that it's, it's unknown. So maybe there are different standards for products that have known ingredients, whether or not they actually work. Well, they certainly don't include homeopathy in that because in homeopathic compounds, there are no ingredients. It's, it might as well be air. It's usually milk sugar, or lactose, or whatever. And it has no active ingredients and it has no traceable or discernible ingredients in it. So why aren't they coming out against something which you can prove has no ingredient and has no effect and yet sells for a very high price? Where are their, their attention is misdirected, I believe. Maybe the people like us who fight against bogus medicine, like homeopathy, should start some sort of campaign to get a homeopathic treatment coupon available on Groupon. Maybe that'll get someone's attention. Well, I have a homeopathic treatment coupon right here. Well, I know, I know you can't see it, but it's very clear to me. I take this into my pharmacy and I can get a 70% reduction on homeopathic medicines. I don't want to lose that. Yeah, you got to keep that. Oh. Money in the pocket. Where did it go? Well. Yeah, I'll find it later. Check the vacuum bag. The Randy Show is a production of the James Randy Educational Foundation. To learn more about how we promote science and critical thinking, go to randy.org.