Use of quasi-scientific language in advertising

[PaulJRobinson]

This pull request has been automatically generated by prose.io.

[philipjohn]

What's the thought behind this? The ASA is doing a pretty good job on this anyway from what I can see, e.g. Homeopathy.

[PaulJRobinson]

Pretty much every anti-aging cream, shampoo or bio-yoghurt will have a
'science' part incvolving collagen, good bacteria, or Pro-V vitamins that
are complete nonsense. I saw a drink this evening that consisted of gold
and collagen. To their credit it didn't make any verbal or written claims
as to what it did or what it was for. But the implication was that it was
good for imoroved skin or beauty. Complete BS
On 20 Mar 2014 21:03, "philipjohn" notifications@github.com wrote:

What's the thought behind this? The ASA is doing a pretty good job on this
anyway from what I can see, e.g. Homeopathy.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/134#issuecomment-38220876
.

[philipjohn]

Ahh okay, yes, I feel your pain ;)

That said, I'm not sure a specific policy on this would be workable in a cost effective way. This should be handled by an education policy that ensures the teaching of sceptical reasoning.

Perhaps there's room for something under a consumer watchdog though?

[Floppy]

This does seem like something that belongs in the ASA rather than being state-controlled. How are their policies set? Do government even have the power to influence it?

[PaulJRobinson]

I can't get access to ASA website at the moment, so will investigate this question later.

[Floppy]

As far as I can tell, this is a matter for the ASA, which is non-legislative. While I feel the pain of bullshit science, I'm not sure that this doesn't fall outside our remit.

[Floppy]

But, @philipjohn's suggestion of making sure education policy includes skeptical reasoning and evidence assessment is a good one, and something we can cover.

[PaulJRobinson]

But the Asa is just an enforcement body. They don't decide what rules to follow. They just ensure all advertisements follow government guidelines. I imagine they can recommend changes to those regulations, but government sets them. This was the case when government changed rules of advertising toys and junk food on children's programmes a few years ago.

[Floppy]

Hm, that might be right. I was going with the bit on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_Standards_Authority_%28United_Kingdom%29 that says:

The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so cannot interpret or enforce legislation. However, its code of advertising practice broadly reflects legislation in many instances.

[philipjohn]

Just trying to figure out how this works. The ASA seems to be mainly an enforcement body. It's independent and financed by the advertising industry. The actual code of conduct they work to is drawn up by the two Committees of Advertising Practice.

The code of conduct does two things;

1. Reflect legal requirements (e.g. tobacco advertising)
2. Specifies rules not required by law

So my interpretation is that for Government to influence what advertising is allowed it has to legislate, and that legislation will then be adopted within the codes of conduct. In this particular proposal, that would be tricky I think.

I still stand by my original comment and in supporting the principle here I'd suggest it's not a bad idea to have something on this. For example, if a future Government or the ASA decides to loosen the rules related to quasi-scientific claims, we can point to a manifesto that pre-empts that.

Perhaps we need to say we would "push" for strengthening of rules around the use of "science" in advertising, and maybe that we would seek to force advertisers to back up any claims with peer-reviewed studies published in open access journals?

[Floppy]

Yes, OK, that's a good compromise. I don't think this would be strong enough to legislate on, but we could say we would encourage the ASA to strengthen their rules around this area. I could agree to that. The current wording could be interpreted that way, but it's perhaps worth clarifying it a little bit more.

[frankieroberto]

Isn't the ASA entirely voluntary (albeit widely followed by traditional media platforms)?

[philipjohn]

I believe so, but I think it's that situation where Government says "we'll
let you self-regulate, but we reserve the right to implement statutory
regulation if you don't do a good enough job"

[Floppy]

Yes, this seems reasonable. 👍

[philipjohn]

Yeah, good wording! 👍

[philipjohn]

Merged in 0a023e7 - and learned that I should be better at commit messages ;)

[Floppy]

This proposal is open for discussion and voting. If you are a contributor to this repository (and not the proposer), you may vote on whether or not it is accepted.

How to vote

Vote by entering one of the following symbols in a comment on this pull request. Only your last vote will be counted, and you may change your vote at any time until the change is accepted or closed.

vote	symbol	type this	points
Agree	👍	:thumbsup:	1
Abstain	✋	:hand:	-1
Block	👎	:thumbsdown:	-1000

Proposals will be accepted and merged once they have a total of 2 points when all votes are counted. Votes will be open for a minimum of 7 days, but will be closed if the proposal is not accepted after 90.

Votes are counted automatically here, and results are set in the merge status checks below.

Changes

If the proposer makes a change to the proposal, no votes cast before that change will be counted.