Testimonials for health remedies have probably been around since the written word. I have an original one-sheet newsletter, "The Spectator", that was printed in London in 1712. It has advertising on the back touting a cure for everything known to ail mankind at the time.

Here's what the Maryland Attorney General has to say about testimonials for supplements: "There may be no proof that a supplement can do what it claims it can do. Very often, supplements are advertised with glowing testimonials from people who claim that the product changed their lives. Consumer testimonials are unreliable, may be exaggerated or untrue, and do not prove a product is safe or will work for you."

The first problem, as I see it, is that you have no idea who wrote the testimonial. None of them I've seen have any real proof of authorship. Let's say someone actually produced a notarized testimonial with a copy of their drivers license. Does that make the testimonial true? Why would it. People produce false documents all the time for a wide variety of reasons, but usually money is involved in some way.

Would someone write a false testimonial to promote a product that they make a profit on? Would some third party, maybe a PR company write one for pay? Do bears defecate in forested areas? Reputable people and companies wouldn't do such things, but I'm sure you would not have to look far to find some who would in a heartbeat.

Next let's address the people who write honest testimonials without any of those financial incentives. In the case of herpes remedies, as I've pointed out here many times, herpes tends to get better on its own over time, even in absence of medical treatment. Non conventional treatments for herpes are quick to take advantage of this effect.

Additionally, there is the well known placebo effect. People are using some sort of treatment so they expect to get better. Often they do get better. Some do so in spite of being in a control group that is taking a "sugar pill" instead of the real treatment. The placebo effect is countered by the scientific method of using a control group.

The only way to establish honest worth of a medical treatment is to do exactly what the legitimate medical community does. They perform independent double blind studies with significantly large groups of study subjects where there are control groups getting placebo treatments without anyone directly performing the study knowing who is a control and who isn't. That way the study is not influenced, even unconsciously. The study must also be reproduceable. Reputable studies are reported in reputable peer reviewed journals as well.

You all have read some of the testimonials for various herpes products. Don't a lot of them sound just too good to be true? Maybe that's because they aren't (true).

In my opinion, testimonial evidence is always questionable. It is very easily manipulated by those with an agenda. Is there any value in testimonials at all? Yes. If honestly given, they can suggest that experimental investigation of the proper type might be worth pursuing, but it is, in no way, a substitute for objective scientific evidence.

"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain

Too bad.

~Della

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.
- Mary Pickford

"And, as we all know, if it's on the Internet, it must be true, right? Here's the problem. As I've said before, testimonials, with few exceptions, do not constitute useful data regarding the efficacy of a therapy. For one thing, the types of testimonials that you see on alternative medicine websites are almost always there to sell products, not to give information. For another thing, testimonials, even honestly given, almost never provide sufficient objective data for a knowledgeable medical scientist determine if there might actually be something to the treatment being described. This problem isn't helped by the fact that testimonials are almost always given by "true believers" who almost always have a tendency towards confirmation bias, the all-too-human tendency to give more weight to incidents and data that conform to preexisting beliefs and to forget things that do not conform to those beliefs. We're all prone to it, including scientists. One major advantage of the scientific method is that it is pretty good at overcoming confirmation bias."

"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain