Can you trust products that claim to prevent dementia?

There is a link giving details of the products and manufacturers, DT. I share your concern that companies are able to use unacceptable advertising for months or even years before the ASA rules that its use should stop. I have repeatedly suggested that all new claims are approved by the ASA before they appear in advertising.

Although the actual adjudication and enforcement process that the ASA follows might seem ponderous and inadequate, I believe the very fact of its existence as a regulatory mechanism has a powerful restraining effect on unjustified product claims. I think the responsibility for substantiating the claims made for products should rest with the manufacturers or distributors rather than the ASA. If it were a legal requirement for any new claims to cite the authority for the claim alongside the claim itself, with appropriate links, that would go a long way to achieving this objective. I also think that action by competitors could be an effective way of moderating unsound claims made for rival products if the method were developed to a more mature level and didn’t descend into a slanging match. Unfortunately “experts” are available for hire to verify the most unsustainable of claims, and mountebanks and charlatans have been peddling dubious remedies for centuries but now with the global reach of the internet.

Who do your propose should do the vetting? And perhaps it could be worth considering the status of the vetting – if an advert is passed and subsequently proves to be defective, do we make a claim against the vetters?

I’d like to know the real scope of this “problem”. We should all treat adverts as what they are – positive claims by the advertiser. They are not going to tell you any negatives and,unless they are unsafe, hazardous or whatever you would surely not expect them to denigrate their own products. It is up to us to exercise common sense and clamp down on those shown to be deceitful.

No comment on politicians, newspapers, and other sources of biased information? It is impractical and a censored world is not for me.

I suggest that the vetting of new claims is done by the ASA, which is already responding to complaints about existing advertising. New advertising need not be vetted unless it makes new claims. If a problem arises then obviously the advertising needs to be revisited but there are precedents. For example, many gardening chemicals are approved for use and have been subsequently banned.

In the case of licensed pharmaceuticals, the manufacturers point out side-effects, interactions with other drugs, etc, so there is a precedent for manufacturers not just focusing on the positive aspects.

I did not respond on the claims of politicians etc. because this is not really relevant to the topic. I would be very happy if politicians stopped making outrageous claims but I’m not sure that Joanna would like us to derail her Convo.

It is the same principle wavechange of whether we want information censored/vetted/sanitised by others before it is fed to us. And who are the experts to look in depth at, for example, all the data behind an advert and capable of making a definitive judgement? As I said earlier I’d rather competent qualified experts put their talents into more productive enterprises.

At present any suspicious claims can be looked at and banned if untrue. The key perhaps is whether this can be done sufficiently quickly; maybe that is the aspect we should be concentrating on to get a way forward that is achievable.