The power balance

The idea that one can achieve and maintain balance, resilience, and versatility simply by wearing a piece of jewelry piques everyone's attention. It's no surprise that Power Balance, a business that makes hologram bracelets that are supposed to boost balance, resilience, and stability, made too much money by selling the piece of 'technology,' or so they will have everybody believe. However, this 'technology' used in a hologram bracelet has been criticized and labeled a fraud by a number of outlets. My goal in this paper is to explain the tricks used in the video advertising the hologram bracelet, the meaningless use of scientific jargon, and how belief in pseudoscientific claims can be harmful.

In the video that supposedly shows the effectiveness of the hologram, the spokesman and his partner use a few tricks to fool the audience about the reliability of the bracelet. Initially, in the balance test, the partner may not have been prepared for the pressure of the push that the spokesman gave to his hand thus causing him to topple. However, when the bracelet is put on his wrist, I dare say the man is prepared for the amount of weight that will push his arm and resists it for as long as he can bear. In the second test that was one to show strength, the spokesman does a push into the fist of his partner downward. Now the partner is indeed prepared because he has probably guessed that for a test of strength he has to be strong; which he does try for some time but then concedes. The man looks pretty far stronger than the spokesman anyway, so one begins to sense some lack. When the bracelet is worn on the partner’s wrist, it is highly likely that the spokesman just puts a show of actually exerting strength into the arm! The final test of flexibility now plays on the mind of the partner. When he has the bracelet on him, he has the belief, which is the placebo effect that he can turn further than he did the first time. Which he does!

When the video to show the effects of wearing a hologram bracelet begins, the spokesman rolls outlines of pseudoscientific jargon from his tongue that are meaningless and yet contribute to the perceived effectiveness of the product. What he claims he wants to do first is to “…demonstrate to you today is a revolutionary product.” The words “revolutionary product” catches the attention of the viewer since one realizes it is a new product either invented or produced and wants to be a part of it. Then he goes on to say that they’ve been “…able to harness natural occurring frequencies and program them into a Mylar hologram to improve your balance, strength, and flexibility.” Now the audience is hooked into believing that from that pseudoscientific jargon the spokesman pronounced so easily, that scientists have made another breakthrough. No one wants to find out what some of these words mean or even confirm if indeed the claims are valid because the first impression has already made the audience form an opinion that these claims are coming from knowledgeable people who have done a research on the issue for a long time. Frequency is a rate of which a sound or electromagnetic vibrates, which happen to us all the time with no effect on the mentioned, while a hologram consists of projected images that are three dimensions.

Ultimately, the pseudoscientific claims made by Power Balance can be harmful to the society as a whole. Firstly, it makes people less critical of the information that they are fed in the media, taking in and believing each and every one of them without confirming the truths to it. Like in this case of the hologram necklaces, many people ask themselves what the harm is of using them instead of asking the serious questions like if the hologram bracelet does work. Power Balance may have gotten through with deceiving people but who is to say they will not do it again, or worse yet another company will learn from this and do the same with critical ideas like medicine or food. Secondly, Power Balance conned people, by selling them bracelets that were not scientifically proven to do as said at $60 apiece. This is outright theft considering that the company was making 3000% profit at the time. People lose money in the belief of things that are a product of pseudoscience so much such that they are taken advantage of and don’t know which is good for them. It is therefore important that people employ a level of critical thinking skill and skepticism when it comes to “performance enhancement” products and “alternative medicine” practices because these medical conspiracy theories make people complacent about the things that they ingest into their bodies and thus make their health conditions worse than they already are, or create an environment for the introduction of other conditions in the body.

CONCLUSION

It is, therefore, clear that having a hologram bracelet around one’s wrist does not affect one’s balance, strength, or flexibility in any way but the placebo effect that one has while wearing it does. This said it is important that critical thinking skills be employed by everyone in their daily lives so that they can gauge whether they are being taken for a ride with advertised products or not.

Works Cited

Porcari, J., Hazuga, R. 2011. Can the Power Balance Bracelet Improve Balance, Strength,

Flexibility, and Power? Journal [Online] Available at: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article/PM3737916/