Industries that Rely on the Illusion of Causality

I've been intrigued (and somewhat disgusted) by industries that sell worthless products to people who desperately want to find a cure for some condition in their life. These types of products are rampant in the multi-level-marketing industry (see our other posts on MLMs) but also can be found in the nutritional supplement industry. Often, amazing, too-good-to-be-true claims are made because the government doesn't regulate these industries or they make their outrageous claims off the record in private conversations, etc. Well, psychologists have a name for the illusion that these industries rely on. Read on to see what I'm talking about...

How about a legal performance enhancing drink...

After yesterday's post about Floyd Landis and the sad state of affairs in professional sports, I received an offer that is so far into the "too good to be true" category that I had to blog about it. Before I tell you what the offer was, I should give some context.

First, I posted a link to the Wall Street Journal article on Floyd Landis' emails on my Facebook page and had several comments. In the comments, we discussed how these illegal drugs are used to boost performance and have been found to do amazing things such as increase cyclists' power output by 20%. We also discussed how athletes involved in these drugs are committing fraud as I blogged about yesterday on Fraudbytes. One of my friends that was participating in this dialogue made the following comment on his Facebook status: