I'm Thinking of a Number...

I was buying my lunch at Subway today and the guy in front of me asked the cashier about a copper bracelet that he was wearing. The cashier said that he used to be skeptical about the alleged benefits of copper bracelets for pain management, but since he started wearing one, he had become a believer. I would bet you that almost everyone knows someone who believes that copper is beneficial for pain relief. In fact, you may believe it yourself. The problem is that there is no actual scientific research to support these claims and I for one, think its all crap. The problem with assessing claims of pain relief from copper bracelets or anything else outside the bounds of real medicine, for that matter, is that they are so subjective. It is difficult to measure pain objectively anyway; minor pain to you, might be excruciating pain to me. It follows that the level of improvement is also subjective and hard to guage. We can't slap a bracelet on someone and find out via scientific measurement that the pain that was a ten, is now a five. That is not how it works. Adherents report gradual improvement and reports of the benefits of these type of devices are exclusively anecdotal. It is more about what we believe works than what actually works. Here's a major clue, regular doctors rarely recommend copper bracelets, or as Bill Engvall would say, "Here's your sign." Without question, the dumbest purchase that I ever made involved another bit of psuedo-scientific quackery, magnets. Magnets are reputed and touted to be useful in curing a number of physical and practical problems. In my case it was practical. During the 1980's, when I was younger and more gullible, I wasted $300 on a magnetic water conditioner. The lovely Mrs. Sneed noticed that the dishes had a white film on them after being washed. Our assumption was that our water was of low quality. The braintrust running our fair city's water department had switched over to Colorado River water and there had been a lot of trouble over water quality. It seemed perfectly reasonable. At the same time I heard a guy on a local radio program touting his revolutionary water treatment device based on magnets. This was no yokel, or so it seemed, but a real scientist, at least he said he was. So I called him. This bozo showed up while I was at work and strapped a cheesey magnet to the water pipe coming into the house. Then he went in turned on the water and he and his assistant stared at the flow for a minute, before exclaiming, "Did you see it change?" The lovely Mrs. Sneed looks at this guy and saying something to the effect of, "You're a freaking crook." then she calls me at work to tell me that he is a crook. The guy beats feet, fearing for his safety. The funny thing was that in the hasty retreat he lost his day planner book and called me at work to ask if I would call her at home to see if it was there. He freely admitted that he was too scared to call himself. Unfortunately, we were out $300 because I wanted this device to work. Another important factor in falling for quackery is wanting something to be true. As it turned out the problem was that the dishwasher was broken and didn't rinse correctly. The film was soap residue. So not only did we own a useless water device, we got to buy a dishwasher. Dave Ramsey calls this stupid tax. This is an important lesson that I once heard from a doctor. When you hear hoof beats think of horses, not zebras, or said another way, common things are common. In science and logic this is called Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is more likely to be right that a complicated one. Another thing happened to me today that shows how easily we delude ourselves. We are going to California tomorrow so that the lovely Mrs. Sneed and Daughter Sneed can attend a conference. We had a plan for Daughter Sneed to meet us at the airport. I thought to myself, What if she has car trouble and we miss the flight? Maybe we should pick her up. Well, tonight on the way to come to our house to drop off Sneedlet so that she could attend a meeting, her car died. Some people would tell themselves that they had a premonition. I would except there is no such thing as a premonition. The real explanation is that I always think of the worst case, so it is natural that when the worst case occurred, I had predicted it. I always predict it. Go figure. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor