The Power Balance Bracelet: Even Though Ronaldo & Barrichello Endorse It, It’s the Oldest Scam in the Book
The latest in a long line of fads and gimmicks to come out of the pseudoscientific world of gadgetry is called the Power Balance bracelet. It is supposed to use two holograms and utilise the energy of the body and enhance it in some way. This is all fine and no one is getting hurt by wearing these cheap little plastic bracelets, but the problem is that the company behind it has managed to rope in a few big name athletes to endorse the product and they have now become a hugely popular, well endorsed product that can be peddled to the general public.
The claim of the Power Balance bracelet is the fact that it is supposed to enhance the body’s natural electric field and realign it in order for our balance to improve, our stamina to increase and our strength to be amplified. The company behind the product has absolutely no scientific research to back up its claims, but they continue to sell the product to the unsuspecting public anyway. The company’s press material states that the bracelet is used in ‘optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body’. The bracelet uses two reflective holograms made from Mylar, the same stuff that is used to keep static at bay and stop the destruction of electronic items. The problem with the bracelet, though, is the fact that it does not work.
Even though Cristiano Ronaldo, Rubens Barrichello and a large number of other sports stars can be seen sporting one around their wrist, that does not mean that the bracelet works. It seems that a lot of websites, blogs and television shows have been denouncing the bracelets as having absolutely no effect at all on athletic performance. One website goes so far as to call it the oldest scam trick in the book. It says Power Balance uses the same sort of scam that has been going on for many years: taking something that is very cheap to make, dressing it up with pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo and getting it endorsed by a few major sports stars is the best way to make a huge profit. A cheap plastic bracelet that costs less than a dollar to make is being sold as high as $60 in some places in America.
It is easy to understand why sports stars would fall for it in the first place. Sports stars and athletes by their very nature are a superstitious bunch; they will try anything that they think improves their game and will keep doing it for years to come. If they try something like a little plastic bracelet and it seems to help them in their performance, they will endorse that little plastic bracelet till the sun sets. But the truth of the matter is that the Power Balance Bracelet is only a placebo. It works by making athletes think they are going to perform better and when someone truly believes they are going to perform better, they naturally do. It is a simple concept of minds working over their own bodies. It has nothing to do with a bracelet. An experiment was even conducted to try and prove that the bracelets did not work. A test was conducted whereby one volunteer out of many was asked to wear the bracelet and then a representative from the Power Balance Company was asked to come in and see which athlete had the bracelet on by judging their performance. The representative failed every time.
A lot of the time, athletes can be persuaded to try something new because of their superstitious nature. It is only dangerous when these athletes try and convince the general public that the product they are endorsing is the best thing in the world and it will actually help their performance. When something that is untested and unproven is sold to the general public, it is a scam that is only making the owners of the company rich in the process. The athletes who endorse the product probably take a cut of the profits as well, because no one works for free these days. Let’s hope that these sorts of scams are forever banished and athletes rely on their own natural abilities and skills to progress in their careers and stop believing in cheap little nasty plastic bracelets that do nothing.
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