What about science in advertising?

M. Taelman and J.P. De Greve have studied 282 advertising messages appearing on television and in newspapers. More than 60 % of them had a scientific reference, more than 75% of those were misleading.They only studied the categories self-medication without prescription, wellbeing products (f.e. cosmetics), washing-powders, food and cleaning products. For example ‘Minarine Becel Pro-Activ’. This product is supposed to be cholesterol reductive however, it only works if you combine the product with healthy food, otherwise it has no results.




Taelman and De Greve concluded that there is a lot of wrong and misleading information out there, but they also mentioned that some commercials are entirely true.


Lynn De Winter

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