Bad science

Ben Goldacre looks at the the Advertising Standards Agency's investigation of Zara, the “UK’s premier psychic adviser”:-

[The ASA] was concerned that statements like “I will cast a spell to grant your wish”, “might be interpreted to mean that her spells would be successful”. Thank God the ASA is there to save us from this underhand marketing practice. I don’t understand why anyone would pay for a spell if they didn’t think it would be successful.

Then the regulator tried to assess Zara’s powers. “We considered that the claim ‘premier psychic adviser’ implied that Zara offered an objectively superior service to all other psychic advisers … because we had seen no comparative evidence to show that Zara offered an objectively superior service to all other psychic advisers, the claim was misleading.”

It’s unclear what kind of evidence might have sufficed for the ASA. If it was a provable phenomenon then perhaps that would genuinely have been mis-selling.