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Lumosity fined $2M for deceptive ads of “Brain Training” app

601 points by lpsz 11y ago

6stringmerc 11y ago
Based on the ads and no little fine print at the bottom citing any real science, I was a skeptic from the outset. Never did any real research to find out if their claims were inflated - or even viable in the first place. Apparently when challenged by the FTC they didn't have anything solid to show in their defense. Oh, and then there's this bit: >The complaint also charges the defendants with failing to disclose that some consumer testimonials featured on the website had been solicited through contests that promised significant prizes, including a free iPad, a lifetime Lumosity subscription, and a round-trip to San Francisco. Classic huckster move, not surprised, glad they got caught, etc.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Ah, consumer testimonials. I pay very close attention to those. If I learn they're fake, I blacklist the business. If someone is willing to lie to people like that on their page, I don't want to have anything to do with them.
  - netheril96 11y ago
    I am under the impression that almost all customer testimonials are fake. They are just too easy to fake one, and hard to catch one, so I assume that they are all lies.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      That's my default assumption too. I don't trust them at all, though I still give the company the benefit of doubt. Innocent until proven guilty, etc. And hell, even if they're not lies, they're usually so vague as to be meaningless anyway.
      - Chris2048 11y ago
        It's also worth noting they don't have to be faked, just mis-represented. You can cherry pick sections of long testimonials. You can cherry-pick testimonials themselves. :-/
        Chris2048 11y ago
        Alternate spellings of cherry--pick used to annoy the anally retentive :-)
pbnjay 11y ago
Every time I heard these ads I cringed. As a scientist (with plenty of experience in the neuroscience domain) I knew there was no way they could back up those claims reliably. I definitely noticed when they toned down the claims, but even then I was surprised they were still going... +1 FTC
jmcgough 11y ago
One of their recruiters reached out to me - in a former life I worked in a neuroscience lab researching neurogenesis to improve memory problems from a neurodegenerative disease (regular exercise can actually do wonders for that). Would have been a really neat to revisit my academic passion, but as I started to read papers that had been published on their product, I wasn't convinced of its efficacy. That, and all of the studies used people with real problems, and they're marketing it to the general population as a way to "train" your brain, which feels wrong to me.
jrbedard 11y ago
Marketplace has done an interesting investigation on those types of mind games. http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2014-2015/brain-training-mind-games http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2014-2015/brain-train...
Briel 11y ago
>The order also imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, which will be suspended due to its financial condition after the company pays $2 million to the Commission. So does that mean after paying this fine, Lumosity is in financial trouble?
- drglitch 11y ago
  Generally "suspended" means "we won't fine you now but if you screw up again, you're paying up". Kind of like probation. The reason given gives me thought that they also simply don't have $50M
- revelation 11y ago
  It means they don't have $50m. I'd say that shouldn't matter, we don't give the poor a discount on parking tickets either (actually, we usually make them more expensive).
  - jonlucc 11y ago
    I have seen a proposal to make the cost of tickets based on value of the car. The thinking is that a person with an Audi is not at all disturbed by paying a $20 parking fine, so it isn't an incentive. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It would most likely only create incentive to fake the value of the car so that it seems lower than it is.
      - jonlucc 11y ago
        Well I don't think you'd just walk up to someone and say: "I want to write you a ticket. What's your car worth?" It would have to be pegged to make model and year or something like that.
      - mikestew 11y ago
w1ntermute 11y ago
Great article on this trend of investors/entrepreneurs with no scientific background thinking they can get into the space and "shake things up": Silicon Valley is confusing pseudo-science with innovation[0] > I don’t think all the VC firms that are moving into the space know what they’re doing — so I think you only need a couple of nasty failures to get them to pull back. Take Pathway Genomics, for instance, which was selling a test that was supposed to tell you if you had cancer. I say "supposed to" because it turns out no one — including Pathway Genomics itself — had done any research whatsoever to determine the test actually did what it said it did. The company sold the test directly to patients through a regulatory loophole, and after we wrote about it, the FDA got wind and told them to knock it off. But Pathway had investors: Edelson Technology Partners, Founders Fund, IBM Watson Group. You’ll notice these are not health care firms. In the next couple of years, we're probably going to see companies like Nootrobox, Stemcentrx, and Theranos go belly up, after which SV investor interest in the healthcare industry will dry up, just as it did in the energy industry after the late 2000s. 0: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10642070/2015-theranos-venture-capital-tech-bubble-disruption http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10642070/2015-theranos-ve...
- ejstronge 11y ago
  I don't know much about Stemcentrx - why do you think they will fail? Their science page sounds reasonable; antibody-drug conjugates don't seem far-fetched and I don't think they're the only ones pursuing that therapeutic paradigm.
  - w1ntermute 11y ago
    Stemcentrx does seem the most reasonable of the three companies I mentioned from a scientific standpoint, but this area is fraught with prior failures[0]. It's just the nature of the industry. Also[1]: > The company says that they’re doing 150 xenografts a day (!) But their rationale is that trying to culture CSCs in vitro runs the risk of having them change character too much, making any assays using them unreliable. My guess is that they’re right about that, but my worry is that xenograft tumors themselves are already unreliable enough to cause trouble (and I have no idea of what happens to them after you “passage” them through multiple animals). Xenograft models are, of course, well known in oncology drug discovery, but one of the things that’s well known about them is that they’re the pure example of “necessary but nowhere near sufficient”. If your drug fails in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic. But if your drug works in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic, too. The odds get better, but they go from “extremely likely not to work” to “pretty likely not to work”, and you take what you can get in this business. > So how’s Stemcentrx doing in their cell hunt? They’re not going to tell Technology Review, naturally, but as the article mentions, the entire CSC hypothesis has been taking some hits recently. It’s still very much an open question. How many tumor types are driven by stem cells, whether they can be targeted (and how), how to tell when such an approach is indicated at all – there are a lot of open questions. It seems very likely that there are cell types inside a given tumor population that are more aggressive and likely to spread, but whether that narrows down to a particular stem cell group, I don’t know. What if there are 234 cell types in some particular tumor, and (say) fourteen of them are the ones to really worry about? What then? Will there be a common mechanism to target these, or not? 0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-shares-plunge-after-company-halts-cancer-drug-trial/trHendPQ0ewSqLm2pixltJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha... 1: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/chasing-cancer-stem-cells http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/cha...
drglitch 11y ago
About a year and a half ago i got dragged into the hype (via family subscription) - and actually enjoyed the games for about 3 days. after that, the fact that they had a total of about 5 variations, with totally predictable ordering, got really boring and i went back to 2048. You don't have to be a neuroscientist to see how this kind of predictable repetitive activity will make you "get better at it" every time you play... Cancelling took a couple of emails and threat to dispute the CC charge. Hooray for FTC!
- tedmiston 11y ago
  I was a big fan of the restaurant server game. There was tons of variation in customers and their orders as you progressed in levels. Enough so that I could never really master that one. It felt like a good memory exercise though.
- transfire 11y ago
  > Cancelling took a couple of emails and threat to dispute the CC charge. Now that is a reason I can understand. But fining them on the basis of questionable claims -- almost every product in the world does that.
lettergram 11y ago
I just wanted to share my thoughts, which are simply: "Thank God!" I've been working on a startup: http://synaptitude.me/ http://synaptitude.me/ (demo is old) Essentially, we can do some of what Luminosity claims (and have independent studies to prove it). Every time someone goes: "Oh it's just like Lumosity" I have to go through and explain the difference. My wife has a degree in neuroscience and I minored in BioE, and we both just HATE Lumosity. Their misleading ads seriously damaged the public perception, and there is no way they can assess anything they claim (if it is even possible). That's pretty much why my startup is working on our applications. We feel there is a market and can definitely help people, but just "brain games" (without feedback/guidance) don't do anything.
- mgrpowers 11y ago
  So many bouncing buttons. Can't concentrate.
- n0us 11y ago
  I would like to see how this sort of thing could benefit people with traumatic brain injuries as it would be a great service to people suffering from this sort of malady but also probably easier to measure the effects on this group compared to a bunch of average individuals.
  - neurotech1 11y ago
    Cheaper EEG sensor interfacing for (neuro)feedback would be a major step forward. Using the EEG sensor with various game interfaces is possible, and has been beneficial for patients with Traumatic Brain Injury. With TBI, the issue is often connectivity between parts of the brain, and that can be measured as EEG Coherence. I agree with lettergram and others, that without feedback these type braingames don't really do anything.
    - BillinghamJ 11y ago
      This is what SenseLabs (https://senselabs.com https://senselabs.com) are doing with a product called Versus (https://getversus.com https://getversus.com). It's an EEG sensor connected to an iPad where you play games. Disclosure: I used to work for them.
mkhalil 11y ago
Dual n-back, coffee, LSD. All things people swear make you smarter. Coffee has proven to make brain work better. But it's only temporary. LSD...well, I've never tried it, but people swear by it. Not sure if scientists would be allowed to try it on test cases.
- rfrank 11y ago
  anyone who says lsd makes you smarter is already stupid.
  - bjshepard 11y ago
    To understand the experience of LSD, I recommend "The New Alchemy" by Alan Watts. http://www.psychedelic-library.org/alchemy.htm http://www.psychedelic-library.org/alchemy.htm
    - rfrank 11y ago
      I've done it several times (as well as basically all popular hallucinogens). I know all about the drug, its impacts on the brain, what it's actually like being on it, etc. I've also lived around many drippy hippie types in Santa Cruz, and the new wave of "microdosing is the key to creative coding" types, and their insights are equally bullshit to me.
      - bjshepard 11y ago
        Ok, but I don't know if anything you just said entails the claim that "Anyone who says LSD makes you smarter is stupid" -- I may be stupid, but I don't think the argument that (a) LSD offers a temporary alternate form of consciousness that (b) can lead to valuable insights and discoveries which (c) improve your overall cognition is a bad one.
        rfrank 11y ago
        Cocaine leads to a temporary alternate form of consciousness that may or may not lead to valuable insights too. So does ecstacy, or ketamine, or modafinil, or coffee, or weed, or the 2c-X family, or whatever RC you want to take, or yoga, or meditation. A temporary change in perception is not an increase in intelligence.
paulpauper 11y ago
even though I'm a 'free market' guy, nice to see action being taken against pseudoscience. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/?WT.mc_id=SA_Twitter http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doe... http://greyenlightenment.com/brain-training-doesnt-make-you-smarter/ http://greyenlightenment.com/brain-training-doesnt-make-you-... 'Brain training' no better than 'penis enhancement'...just as dubious
cordite 11y ago
NPR plays ads on the radio about Lumosity and brain training, nearly every day for the last year here. It seemed ED to be more of a "We will give you a chance to raise an arbitrary number over time if you pay us" and heavy marketing ploy. Seems like if cow clicker got viral and took peoples money.
- dayk995 11y ago
  I was just thinking that. I only know of this product because it's so advertised on NPR. Time to replace these ads with something even more useless.
- sevensor 11y ago
  They play those ads on NPR here too. They always make me think about what my dad (a psychologist) told me about IQ tests: all IQ actually measures is how well you do on IQ tests. It's entirely possible to study for the test and improve your IQ. Of course, doing this doesn't make you any better at anything useful, but it might make you eligible for Mensa. (My dad is very skeptical when it comes to psychometrics.)
  - Nutmog 11y ago
    That's a valid criticism if the test taker is trying to cheat, but if its yourself trying to find out your own IQ and you didn't train for it, it's still a useful predictor of academic success.
    - sevensor 11y ago
      Absolutely, there's some correlation if the test-taker isn't tainted. But I bring it up here because Lumosity basically tells its customers they're getting smarter because they're getting better at its "brain-training" games, when it's pretty clear that the only thing they're likely to get better at is the games.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ryanferg 11y ago
All of these brain training products are suspect. Evidence for far transfer (training in one task transferring to a different domain task) is surprisingly hard to find, and empirical findings otherwise tend to disappear or diminish when replicated. Many of the pro-brain-training camp have already begun to shift the goal posts. First it was 'simple games increase IQ,' which turned out to be difficult to prove when well controlled studies were performed. Now it's more along the lines of 'These simple games might have preventative effects against age related declines!,' which is an even harder claim to actually prove given the difficulties performing well controlled studies on aged participants. In the cognitive science world, if we discovered a solid far transfer paradigm, especially one which transferred to something like G(eneral Intelligence), it would be our anti-baldness pill\flying car\4-day cellphone battery. People thought that these working memory transfer effects were the real deal and got very excited about it, money poured in, and the water got muddied by all these scientists with conflicts. I obviously don't put much stock in working memory training. I wish it worked like they said, but I don't think it does. If far-transfer shows up at all, it's tiny, and doesn't persist after delay.
- bberrry 11y ago
  I was under the impression that Dual-n-Back[0] had real benefits. Is that not the case? [0] http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/
  - w1ntermute 11y ago
    Gwern's done extensive research into this, and his meta-analysis has shown there's "a net gain (medium-sized) on the post-training IQ tests"[0, 1]. 0: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis 1: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ
    - knowaveragejoe 11y ago
      Why is this downvoted? I was under the impression that Gwern did solid resarch and was well respected in the HN community.
georgemcbay 11y ago
I have something of a litmus test for companies where I just assume any company that advertises a lot via "live reads" on radio/podcasts is not to be trusted. Lumosity, LifeLock, etc. There are outliers for which I wouldn't quite say "not to be trusted" like Dollar Shave Club and Blue Apron, but even in those cases you are, IMO, overpaying for a vanishingly small amount of convenience. I think it holds up pretty well though that putting a lot of effort into advertising via "live reads" on radio and podcasts is a negative indicator as to how much you can trust a company.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  So I take it you don't aren't munching on your Naturebox and mailing the government (using your Stamps.com scale) your application to start a business (that you created on LegalZoom) making websites via Squarespace, all while listening to an audiobook you got from Audible, before dozing off on your Casper mattress wearing nothing but your "Me Undies"? ...I listen to too many podcasts.
  - ipsin 11y ago
    Ugh. I know it's just an example, but stamps.com is one of those "borderline legal frauds", a step away from phone slamming. Opt-in renewal, online signup and "you have to call us to unsubscribe". Now I think of stamps.com as the literal devil -- it might be possible to get a good deal, but you really better know what you've agreed to. http://darkpatterns.org/stamps-com-october-2013/ http://darkpatterns.org/stamps-com-october-2013/
  - patmcc 11y ago
    Don't forget to use MailChimp.
  - dredwerker 11y ago
    Obviously I do too. That was funny :). I am not in the states and I can't get most of the services. I wish they would at least do regional podcasting advertising. A startup opportunity :)
  - 11y ago
circa 11y ago
I did not read the article yet but what immediately comes to mind are those "try this one weird trick" ads
- mbcrower 11y ago
  I used a weird trick to pay off my mortgage
Laaw 11y ago
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think F.lux is equally as guilty of this. None of their cited studies are done with light from an LCD screen (which is prone to white light bleeding), or using their app.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  Is flux trying to sell you something? I thought their software was free.
  - Laaw 11y ago
    What does cost have to do with anything? We're talking about its ability to do what it claims.
- niuzeta 11y ago
  It's a fair point; the difference, my counter-point, if you will, is that F.lux is free. If F.lux's claims prove to be false, then at worst, the application is misguiding or misinforming. Lumosity, on the other hand, is outright fraudulent, if their claims are proven wrong and continue to profit off of it.
marcuniq 11y ago
Improvement of fluid intelligence by training with dual-n-back was studied in Jaeggi et al.[0], but could not be successfully replicated [1]. More in the following article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doe... [0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/04/25/0801268105.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/04/25/0801268105.full... [1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063614 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
kazinator 11y ago
The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears. It is a popular belief that doing mental work staves off cognitive decline (including age-related). I bet you that everyone at Lumosity actually believes it because their mother told them that when they were kids. My wife (Japanese) always says "good for older people" about any sort of puzzle. She didn't get this from being deceived by Lumosity. The FTC is being very heavy-handed here. It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail. Testimonials being paid for shills? Like, say it ain't so. Every damed commercial you've ever seen in your life has fake people presenting fake testimonials. It's assumed. (Claiming that doing puzzles can stave off Alzheimer's is going somewhat far, though. That disease has specific physiological causes which can't be reversed through brain activity.)
- arbitrage 11y ago
  The FTC is doing it's job. You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them. This is the same sort of thing that a lot of people criticized the FDA over for going after Cheerios for making claims about being healthy for your heart. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124216077825612187 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124216077825612187 It's a good thing that there are parts of the government out there making sure you can't just make up whatever you want to sell a product.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them. Sure you can. You just have to be selling drugs, rather than video games. I don't quite follow the logic.
    - bsder 11y ago
      Herbalife would beg to differ with your claims.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  > The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears. Yes, and they trumpeted it several times per day in a variety of advertising channels While the belief may exist, they had deceptive ads turned to 11. You don't see puzzles or similar product being advertised almost 24/7 on tv. I think the FTC is not being heavy handed at all
nostromo 11y ago
Where does that money go? I really hope the FTC doesn't get it. It's a conflict of interest that permeates local law enforcement all across America.
- iamchmod 11y ago
  FTC puts proceeds of settlement into a "consumer restitution" or "consumer redress" fund. Consumers who were affected by the bad actors, can claim their money back via a separate company which administers that fund. After a period of time, once all affected customers have had time to claim their restitution (usually 12-24 months), then any remaining money left in the "redress" or "restitution" fund goes into the FTCs coffers. I can't quickly find stats on what percentage is usually claimed by consumers. But last time I researched this, it was pretty low with something like <10% of affected consumers actually claiming their restitution and 90% going back into FTC budget.
kevinalexbrown 11y ago
One intuitive way to categorize products is according to the observability of the value. In one class, it's readily apparent: the storage is cheaper, it doesn't fail very often, there's little downtime, my payments always go through, the user experience just feels better, all my friends use it. This doesn't have to be objective, just 'noticeable'. On the other hand, it's hard to judge the value of an encryption app, or a brain training program, because the true value is often hidden. It's difficult to tell, at least for the average consumer whether an encryption app works. There might be signs for the more immediately knowledgeable ('why won't the passwords take special characters, or passwords longer than 12 characters?'), but it's usually a small group. Unfortunately, this is probably going to make it harder for the latter kind of company to grow quickly, because trust takes time to develop. I don't just need to trust that my data will be safe - the entire value of the product depends on my trust that it does what it says. I have no idea if lumosity does what it claimed, but I doubt I could easily tell in a day or two. Contrast that with instagram or a better computer - the value (however large or small) is obvious.
hyperion2010 11y ago
I wrote my prelims on these kinds of 'training' paradigms and there is zero credible experimental evidence that ANY of them actually generalize to things like fluid intelligence or g. For an excellent overview on the real state of the science see here [0]. 0. http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus-on-the-brain-training-industry-from-the-scientific-community-2/ http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus...
Kinnard 11y ago
Did the USDA ever get fined for the Food Pyramid being completely wrong and then being thrown out[1]? Justice, justice? [1] http://www.pjstar.com/article/20151230/OPINION/151239951 http://www.pjstar.com/article/20151230/OPINION/151239951
grillvogel 11y ago
I always wondered how the "brain improvements" from this thing compared to just playing a video game
interesting_att 11y ago
The worst part of this is that Lumosity probably did a cost-beenfit analysis years back, realizing they would make more money via these deceptive ads than the expected FTC fine. For those who don't know- Lumosity is killing it. They can easily pay this fine with their enormous profits.
gobengo 11y ago
Only 2M...?
sidcool 11y ago
I was subscribed to Lumosity for 2 years.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  Did you use it?
  - sidcool 11y ago
    Quite a lot. Religiously followed the schedule. Felt good for doing it. Can't say it helped or not.
coffeevradar 11y ago
I have less faith in public radio because my local station is always playing Lumosity adverts. I'm old enough to remember when the whole "sponsored by" thing being extended to full ads was a controversial development on US public radio. Now they're shilling outright scams and doing so with specific promises that are completely specious.
- jordanlev 11y ago
  When I was a kid, I remember a talk radio show my family listened to that was one of those consumer watchdog / product review shows. One of the advertisements that you head a lot back then was for purchasing a star (like, getting your name registered somewhere and when a new star was discovered by astronomers it would be named after you?)... It was obviously a scam and all you'd get is a bogus certificate in the mail. Anyway, one day someone called into the show and asked about this product that they advertised, and the host stammered a bit and basically said "well, yeah that's not true but it's all just for fun, a fun gift for people maybe". Was funny to hear him trying to justify this obvious scam because they happened to advertise with the station, even though the entire premise of the show was calling bullshit on other phony product claims.
  - mjklin 11y ago
    Did the host get in trouble for this?
  - freehunter 11y ago
    My grandmother has a "star named after her". She knows it's fake but she says she appreciates the thought behind it. Like wearing costume jewelry, you know that green hunk of plastic the size of a walnut isn't a real emerald but that doesn't stop people from wearing them.
    - estefan 11y ago
      I'll name a grain of sand after her too if you ping me a $100... :-D
golergka 11y ago
I develop similar product, that focuses on eye training instead of brains. Half of our office is filled with ophthalmologists, with some big names (supposedly — I don't know much about the field). Constant print outs of scientific articles lying around, presentation files stick to the walls (I don't know the proper term, but you know what I mean if you've been into scientific conferences and seminars) and overall vibe really feels like it's a university faculty and not a start-up. Damn, we even have fully equipped ophthalmologist office and get free eye exams when it's not used to measure our beta-testers. I always assumed that brain training apps are just like that. What "did not have the science" really mean in this case? Did they find some errors in peer-reviewed papers these companies have published? Or they just faked it all?
- fhars 11y ago
  They are exactly like that, in that almost all purported benefits of eye training and brain training alike are not supported by scientific evidence and only very narrow effects exists: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825744 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825744
  - golergka 11y ago
    As I said, I certainly don't know enough to argue about it in scientific terms, so unfortunately, I have to resort to trust to authority. So, for comparison with this single paper from 2005, here are recent papers of our lead researcher (who has a cute habit of going around the office in the evening and collecting the forgotten tea cups into the washing machine) on the matter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Polat+U%5BAuthor%5D http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Polat+U%5BAuthor%5D
mrzool 11y ago
Looks like they toned down their website quite a lot: http://www.lumosity.com/ http://www.lumosity.com/ Confront that with the transcript in the original FTC complaint (from page 7): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/160105lumoslabscmpt.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/160105lumos...
wnevets 11y ago
The brain training craze all started with the nintendo's brain age game for the ds.
plg 11y ago
Where is the scientist? The grad school dropout with one peer reviewed publication? http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team
mapt 11y ago
Ugh. Could have been higher. My local entertainment mediums were spammed with this ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGjr_CJ2n98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGjr_CJ2n98 for a solid year or two. The vapid, cultish, yet manic grin. The "Now, with Neuroscience(tm)!". The recursive caricature of a borderline mentally retarded person who now feels that everything is right in the world because she's paid tithe to the Intelligence Authorities. The notion that the commercial is not only defrauding, but actively mocking anyone too uneducated or uncritical or low-self-confidence, to doubt their claims. The several percent of her life it's implied she's supposed to spend engaging in ritual flagellation with repetitive, poorly designed games, in order to diminish the shaming at not 'working on my mind'. It is the singular most offensive scumbag commercial advertisement that comes to mind. It brings on vivid fantasies of punching the smug grin off of this woman, even though I know intellectually she's just a professional actress, and I'm a pacifist.
tedmiston 11y ago
My perspective on Lumosity and its "science" is different because I was a paying customer. I found Lumosity in 2009-2010 and played occasionally, eventually converting to a paid membership in 2012-2013 and playing weekly on desktop and iOS. I was even quite proud to make it to the 98th percentile of all players [1]. (For reference, that's statistically consistent with my score on a standardized IQ test.) Eventually something felt off about the scoring. At one point I distinctly recall them catching flack for changing the algorithm to boost you higher for playing more without necessarily playing better. What I found anecdotally was that playing their games while I was in a distracted state would help me regain focus to the point where I could work on a cognitively challenging task, like a programming project, math problems, etc. afterward that I wouldn't have been able to before playing. I don't claim (or know) whether any longterm difference was made, but I also didn't join for that reason and never really cared about that. Lumosity games gave me a brain reset not dissimilar to a short meditation. I don't know the science behind this idea, and perhaps it's purely placebo effect, but personally Lumosity was helpful to my life. That was my experience. 1: https://twitter.com/kicksopenminds/status/426760502128041984 https://twitter.com/kicksopenminds/status/426760502128041984
balls187 11y ago
Rose-Hulman (my alma mater), should probably revise this: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/academics/2012/rose-hulman-no-9-on-americas-smartest-colleges-list,-cited-for-students-having-best-memory.aspx http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/academics/2012/rose-hulman-n...
ivanca 11y ago
So, televangelist can claim that you need to send a "seed" (money) to get good fortune and get away with it making millions from the most gullible people around, but a brain-training app is penalized for deceptive ads? Shit doesn't add up.
ericdykstra 11y ago
On the topic of games and their actual potential impact on cognition and other aspects of life, Jane McGonigal is doing a lot of interesting research, and I highly recommend reading or listening to some of her material if you're interested in the subject. A good starting point is her interview with Tim Ferriss (http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/07/28/jane-mcgonigal/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/07/28/jane-mcgonigal/), and from there check out her books if you're interested in going deeper. I believe it's in that interview that she says that these kinds of "brain training" games are less effective than just normal games built for fun at developing any kind of cognitive ability. I tried Lumosity out for a trial period to see what it was about, but the games were overly simplistic and not well-designed from a fun standpoint. I also felt like I was hitting 90% of their specific "categories" of games with a single game like Starcraft 2, except a game like Starcraft 2 actually forces you to engage the thinking part of your brain if you want to perform at any decent level.
beilabs 11y ago
Just going to plug a product I was working on for a while. Active Memory (From ABC), was working really closely with a team of neuroscientists out of Australia. Lots of their data goes directly into research programs. Here's the blurb from their site: "Active Memory has been developed in partnership with the University of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. The program is built on a breakthrough statistical model that examines your game results and serves up a customised training schedule that challenges your brain at just the right level of difficulty. Most importantly, the program aims to measure the changes that are happening to your cognition, based on your training. Critically, your participation in Active Memory will contribute to one of the largest studies of its kind into brain training and its potential health benefits." Was a really great team to work with. Had a very different angle from Luminosity and was held to very strict advertising controls through being a part of ABCs commercial arm. https://www.activememory.com https://www.activememory.com
- api_or_ipa 11y ago
  The ABC is the Australian Broadcasting Corp, in the same category as the BBC and the CBC
atomical 11y ago
How does Cogmed compare to Lumosity?
wodenokoto 11y ago
While the research underpinning the product has always been weak in it findings, I find their goal post very low. If we assume that brain games work, why aren't we comparing this to sudoku, Tetris, trivial pursuit or memory? Or simply reading a book, doing homework? It's not like real life is low on intellectual challenges and if brain training is really transferable, shouldn't solving math problems be transferable too?
rdl 11y ago
Building a business on lies and then paying a $2mm fine when caught (without even 100% probability) seems to be an economically rational strategy. Unfortunately.
tmtinvestor 11y ago
None of this has been around long enough to generate good longitudinal data either way, imo. That said, taking a cognitive assessment across a couple domains, playing a series of games based on those very same cognitive tasks, and then retaking the same cognitive assessment seems pretty suspect. I would think results would be biased, similar to retest effects. At the end of the day, improvement is either transferred to a variety of other contexts beyond gaming or not. I would think that the true test. There would be some value in a diagnostic, something that would identify deficits, and I think Lumosity offers such a thing but I don't believe it has been rigorously validated.
ElginScott 11y ago
Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to sell games than neuroscience. Take an assessment, play games based on that assessment, and take the assessment again --- garbage in, garbage out. The value is in identifying congitive deficits so that proper strategies may be put in place that can be practiced in a variety of contexts such that they are actually transferable to everyday life. There's not a heck of a lot of science in the Lumosity baseline either, since all their data comes from an uncontrolled environment on the web. But there are a number of valid, peer reviewed online neurocognitve batteries available without having to go to a psychologist for a few grand. NIH Toolbox (for researchers) http://www.nihtoolbox.org/Pages/default.aspx http://www.nihtoolbox.org/Pages/default.aspx Mindprint Learning (which has the Penn CNB for children) https://mindprintlearning.com/ https://mindprintlearning.com/ Brain Resource (which has the Web Neuro for adults) http://www.brainresource.com/mybrainsolutions/personal http://www.brainresource.com/mybrainsolutions/personal
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sprague 11y ago
Is the FDA intervention good or bad? At first glance, it seems like the answer is yes because the FDA action signals that outrageous, unprovable claims do not give offer a competitive advantage. But by making FDA “experts” the sole arbiter of truth, ideas outside the mainstream are harder to pursue. Some people probably really did benefit from the Luminosity, but now it’s much harder to figure out why. Note that the FDA also makes it harder on people like Consumer Reports, Cochrane Reviews, etc. who get fewer donations and customers because much of what they could be doing competes with the FDA’s government-subsidized service.

601 points by lpsz 11y ago

Based on the ads and no little fine print at the bottom citing any real science, I was a skeptic from the outset. Never did any real research to find out if their claims were inflated - or even viable in the first place. Apparently when challenged by the FTC they didn't have anything solid to show in their defense. Oh, and then there's this bit: >The complaint also charges the defendants with failing to disclose that some consumer testimonials featured on the website had been solicited through contests that promised significant prizes, including a free iPad, a lifetime Lumosity subscription, and a round-trip to San Francisco. Classic huckster move, not surprised, glad they got caught, etc.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Ah, consumer testimonials. I pay very close attention to those. If I learn they're fake, I blacklist the business. If someone is willing to lie to people like that on their page, I don't want to have anything to do with them.
- netheril96 11y ago
  I am under the impression that almost all customer testimonials are fake. They are just too easy to fake one, and hard to catch one, so I assume that they are all lies.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    That's my default assumption too. I don't trust them at all, though I still give the company the benefit of doubt. Innocent until proven guilty, etc. And hell, even if they're not lies, they're usually so vague as to be meaningless anyway.
    - Chris2048 11y ago
      It's also worth noting they don't have to be faked, just mis-represented. You can cherry pick sections of long testimonials. You can cherry-pick testimonials themselves. :-/
      - Chris2048 11y ago
        Alternate spellings of cherry--pick used to annoy the anally retentive :-)

pbnjay 11y ago

Every time I heard these ads I cringed. As a scientist (with plenty of experience in the neuroscience domain) I knew there was no way they could back up those claims reliably. I definitely noticed when they toned down the claims, but even then I was surprised they were still going... +1 FTC

jmcgough 11y ago

One of their recruiters reached out to me - in a former life I worked in a neuroscience lab researching neurogenesis to improve memory problems from a neurodegenerative disease (regular exercise can actually do wonders for that). Would have been a really neat to revisit my academic passion, but as I started to read papers that had been published on their product, I wasn't convinced of its efficacy. That, and all of the studies used people with real problems, and they're marketing it to the general population as a way to "train" your brain, which feels wrong to me.

jrbedard 11y ago

Marketplace has done an interesting investigation on those types of mind games. http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2014-2015/brain-training-mind-games http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2014-2015/brain-train...

Briel 11y ago

>The order also imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, which will be suspended due to its financial condition after the company pays $2 million to the Commission. So does that mean after paying this fine, Lumosity is in financial trouble?

drglitch 11y ago
Generally "suspended" means "we won't fine you now but if you screw up again, you're paying up". Kind of like probation. The reason given gives me thought that they also simply don't have $50M
revelation 11y ago
It means they don't have $50m. I'd say that shouldn't matter, we don't give the poor a discount on parking tickets either (actually, we usually make them more expensive).
- jonlucc 11y ago
  I have seen a proposal to make the cost of tickets based on value of the car. The thinking is that a person with an Audi is not at all disturbed by paying a $20 parking fine, so it isn't an incentive. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It would most likely only create incentive to fake the value of the car so that it seems lower than it is.
    - jonlucc 11y ago
      Well I don't think you'd just walk up to someone and say: "I want to write you a ticket. What's your car worth?" It would have to be pegged to make model and year or something like that.
    - mikestew 11y ago

w1ntermute 11y ago

Great article on this trend of investors/entrepreneurs with no scientific background thinking they can get into the space and "shake things up": Silicon Valley is confusing pseudo-science with innovation[0] > I don’t think all the VC firms that are moving into the space know what they’re doing — so I think you only need a couple of nasty failures to get them to pull back. Take Pathway Genomics, for instance, which was selling a test that was supposed to tell you if you had cancer. I say "supposed to" because it turns out no one — including Pathway Genomics itself — had done any research whatsoever to determine the test actually did what it said it did. The company sold the test directly to patients through a regulatory loophole, and after we wrote about it, the FDA got wind and told them to knock it off. But Pathway had investors: Edelson Technology Partners, Founders Fund, IBM Watson Group. You’ll notice these are not health care firms. In the next couple of years, we're probably going to see companies like Nootrobox, Stemcentrx, and Theranos go belly up, after which SV investor interest in the healthcare industry will dry up, just as it did in the energy industry after the late 2000s. 0: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10642070/2015-theranos-venture-capital-tech-bubble-disruption http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10642070/2015-theranos-ve...

ejstronge 11y ago
I don't know much about Stemcentrx - why do you think they will fail? Their science page sounds reasonable; antibody-drug conjugates don't seem far-fetched and I don't think they're the only ones pursuing that therapeutic paradigm.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Stemcentrx does seem the most reasonable of the three companies I mentioned from a scientific standpoint, but this area is fraught with prior failures[0]. It's just the nature of the industry. Also[1]: > The company says that they’re doing 150 xenografts a day (!) But their rationale is that trying to culture CSCs in vitro runs the risk of having them change character too much, making any assays using them unreliable. My guess is that they’re right about that, but my worry is that xenograft tumors themselves are already unreliable enough to cause trouble (and I have no idea of what happens to them after you “passage” them through multiple animals). Xenograft models are, of course, well known in oncology drug discovery, but one of the things that’s well known about them is that they’re the pure example of “necessary but nowhere near sufficient”. If your drug fails in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic. But if your drug works in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic, too. The odds get better, but they go from “extremely likely not to work” to “pretty likely not to work”, and you take what you can get in this business. > So how’s Stemcentrx doing in their cell hunt? They’re not going to tell Technology Review, naturally, but as the article mentions, the entire CSC hypothesis has been taking some hits recently. It’s still very much an open question. How many tumor types are driven by stem cells, whether they can be targeted (and how), how to tell when such an approach is indicated at all – there are a lot of open questions. It seems very likely that there are cell types inside a given tumor population that are more aggressive and likely to spread, but whether that narrows down to a particular stem cell group, I don’t know. What if there are 234 cell types in some particular tumor, and (say) fourteen of them are the ones to really worry about? What then? Will there be a common mechanism to target these, or not? 0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-shares-plunge-after-company-halts-cancer-drug-trial/trHendPQ0ewSqLm2pixltJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha... 1: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/chasing-cancer-stem-cells http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/cha...

drglitch 11y ago

About a year and a half ago i got dragged into the hype (via family subscription) - and actually enjoyed the games for about 3 days. after that, the fact that they had a total of about 5 variations, with totally predictable ordering, got really boring and i went back to 2048. You don't have to be a neuroscientist to see how this kind of predictable repetitive activity will make you "get better at it" every time you play... Cancelling took a couple of emails and threat to dispute the CC charge. Hooray for FTC!

tedmiston 11y ago
I was a big fan of the restaurant server game. There was tons of variation in customers and their orders as you progressed in levels. Enough so that I could never really master that one. It felt like a good memory exercise though.
transfire 11y ago
> Cancelling took a couple of emails and threat to dispute the CC charge. Now that is a reason I can understand. But fining them on the basis of questionable claims -- almost every product in the world does that.

lettergram 11y ago

I just wanted to share my thoughts, which are simply: "Thank God!" I've been working on a startup: http://synaptitude.me/ http://synaptitude.me/ (demo is old) Essentially, we can do some of what Luminosity claims (and have independent studies to prove it). Every time someone goes: "Oh it's just like Lumosity" I have to go through and explain the difference. My wife has a degree in neuroscience and I minored in BioE, and we both just HATE Lumosity. Their misleading ads seriously damaged the public perception, and there is no way they can assess anything they claim (if it is even possible). That's pretty much why my startup is working on our applications. We feel there is a market and can definitely help people, but just "brain games" (without feedback/guidance) don't do anything.

mgrpowers 11y ago
So many bouncing buttons. Can't concentrate.
n0us 11y ago
I would like to see how this sort of thing could benefit people with traumatic brain injuries as it would be a great service to people suffering from this sort of malady but also probably easier to measure the effects on this group compared to a bunch of average individuals.
- neurotech1 11y ago
  Cheaper EEG sensor interfacing for (neuro)feedback would be a major step forward. Using the EEG sensor with various game interfaces is possible, and has been beneficial for patients with Traumatic Brain Injury. With TBI, the issue is often connectivity between parts of the brain, and that can be measured as EEG Coherence. I agree with lettergram and others, that without feedback these type braingames don't really do anything.
  - BillinghamJ 11y ago
    This is what SenseLabs (https://senselabs.com https://senselabs.com) are doing with a product called Versus (https://getversus.com https://getversus.com). It's an EEG sensor connected to an iPad where you play games. Disclosure: I used to work for them.

mkhalil 11y ago

Dual n-back, coffee, LSD. All things people swear make you smarter. Coffee has proven to make brain work better. But it's only temporary. LSD...well, I've never tried it, but people swear by it. Not sure if scientists would be allowed to try it on test cases.

rfrank 11y ago
anyone who says lsd makes you smarter is already stupid.
- bjshepard 11y ago
  To understand the experience of LSD, I recommend "The New Alchemy" by Alan Watts. http://www.psychedelic-library.org/alchemy.htm http://www.psychedelic-library.org/alchemy.htm
  - rfrank 11y ago
    I've done it several times (as well as basically all popular hallucinogens). I know all about the drug, its impacts on the brain, what it's actually like being on it, etc. I've also lived around many drippy hippie types in Santa Cruz, and the new wave of "microdosing is the key to creative coding" types, and their insights are equally bullshit to me.
    - bjshepard 11y ago
      Ok, but I don't know if anything you just said entails the claim that "Anyone who says LSD makes you smarter is stupid" -- I may be stupid, but I don't think the argument that (a) LSD offers a temporary alternate form of consciousness that (b) can lead to valuable insights and discoveries which (c) improve your overall cognition is a bad one.
      - rfrank 11y ago
        Cocaine leads to a temporary alternate form of consciousness that may or may not lead to valuable insights too. So does ecstacy, or ketamine, or modafinil, or coffee, or weed, or the 2c-X family, or whatever RC you want to take, or yoga, or meditation. A temporary change in perception is not an increase in intelligence.

paulpauper 11y ago

even though I'm a 'free market' guy, nice to see action being taken against pseudoscience. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/?WT.mc_id=SA_Twitter http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doe... http://greyenlightenment.com/brain-training-doesnt-make-you-smarter/ http://greyenlightenment.com/brain-training-doesnt-make-you-... 'Brain training' no better than 'penis enhancement'...just as dubious

cordite 11y ago

NPR plays ads on the radio about Lumosity and brain training, nearly every day for the last year here. It seemed ED to be more of a "We will give you a chance to raise an arbitrary number over time if you pay us" and heavy marketing ploy. Seems like if cow clicker got viral and took peoples money.

dayk995 11y ago
I was just thinking that. I only know of this product because it's so advertised on NPR. Time to replace these ads with something even more useless.
sevensor 11y ago
They play those ads on NPR here too. They always make me think about what my dad (a psychologist) told me about IQ tests: all IQ actually measures is how well you do on IQ tests. It's entirely possible to study for the test and improve your IQ. Of course, doing this doesn't make you any better at anything useful, but it might make you eligible for Mensa. (My dad is very skeptical when it comes to psychometrics.)
- Nutmog 11y ago
  That's a valid criticism if the test taker is trying to cheat, but if its yourself trying to find out your own IQ and you didn't train for it, it's still a useful predictor of academic success.
  - sevensor 11y ago
    Absolutely, there's some correlation if the test-taker isn't tainted. But I bring it up here because Lumosity basically tells its customers they're getting smarter because they're getting better at its "brain-training" games, when it's pretty clear that the only thing they're likely to get better at is the games.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ryanferg 11y ago

All of these brain training products are suspect. Evidence for far transfer (training in one task transferring to a different domain task) is surprisingly hard to find, and empirical findings otherwise tend to disappear or diminish when replicated. Many of the pro-brain-training camp have already begun to shift the goal posts. First it was 'simple games increase IQ,' which turned out to be difficult to prove when well controlled studies were performed. Now it's more along the lines of 'These simple games might have preventative effects against age related declines!,' which is an even harder claim to actually prove given the difficulties performing well controlled studies on aged participants. In the cognitive science world, if we discovered a solid far transfer paradigm, especially one which transferred to something like G(eneral Intelligence), it would be our anti-baldness pill\flying car\4-day cellphone battery. People thought that these working memory transfer effects were the real deal and got very excited about it, money poured in, and the water got muddied by all these scientists with conflicts. I obviously don't put much stock in working memory training. I wish it worked like they said, but I don't think it does. If far-transfer shows up at all, it's tiny, and doesn't persist after delay.

bberrry 11y ago
I was under the impression that Dual-n-Back[0] had real benefits. Is that not the case? [0] http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Gwern's done extensive research into this, and his meta-analysis has shown there's "a net gain (medium-sized) on the post-training IQ tests"[0, 1]. 0: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis 1: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ
  - knowaveragejoe 11y ago
    Why is this downvoted? I was under the impression that Gwern did solid resarch and was well respected in the HN community.

georgemcbay 11y ago

I have something of a litmus test for companies where I just assume any company that advertises a lot via "live reads" on radio/podcasts is not to be trusted. Lumosity, LifeLock, etc. There are outliers for which I wouldn't quite say "not to be trusted" like Dollar Shave Club and Blue Apron, but even in those cases you are, IMO, overpaying for a vanishingly small amount of convenience. I think it holds up pretty well though that putting a lot of effort into advertising via "live reads" on radio and podcasts is a negative indicator as to how much you can trust a company.

cableshaft 11y ago
So I take it you don't aren't munching on your Naturebox and mailing the government (using your Stamps.com scale) your application to start a business (that you created on LegalZoom) making websites via Squarespace, all while listening to an audiobook you got from Audible, before dozing off on your Casper mattress wearing nothing but your "Me Undies"? ...I listen to too many podcasts.
- ipsin 11y ago
  Ugh. I know it's just an example, but stamps.com is one of those "borderline legal frauds", a step away from phone slamming. Opt-in renewal, online signup and "you have to call us to unsubscribe". Now I think of stamps.com as the literal devil -- it might be possible to get a good deal, but you really better know what you've agreed to. http://darkpatterns.org/stamps-com-october-2013/ http://darkpatterns.org/stamps-com-october-2013/
- patmcc 11y ago
  Don't forget to use MailChimp.
- dredwerker 11y ago
  Obviously I do too. That was funny :). I am not in the states and I can't get most of the services. I wish they would at least do regional podcasting advertising. A startup opportunity :)
- 11y ago

circa 11y ago

I did not read the article yet but what immediately comes to mind are those "try this one weird trick" ads

mbcrower 11y ago
I used a weird trick to pay off my mortgage

Laaw 11y ago

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think F.lux is equally as guilty of this. None of their cited studies are done with light from an LCD screen (which is prone to white light bleeding), or using their app.

nommm-nommm 11y ago
Is flux trying to sell you something? I thought their software was free.
- Laaw 11y ago
  What does cost have to do with anything? We're talking about its ability to do what it claims.
niuzeta 11y ago
It's a fair point; the difference, my counter-point, if you will, is that F.lux is free. If F.lux's claims prove to be false, then at worst, the application is misguiding or misinforming. Lumosity, on the other hand, is outright fraudulent, if their claims are proven wrong and continue to profit off of it.

marcuniq 11y ago

Improvement of fluid intelligence by training with dual-n-back was studied in Jaeggi et al.[0], but could not be successfully replicated [1]. More in the following article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doe... [0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/04/25/0801268105.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/04/25/0801268105.full... [1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063614 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

kazinator 11y ago

The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears. It is a popular belief that doing mental work staves off cognitive decline (including age-related). I bet you that everyone at Lumosity actually believes it because their mother told them that when they were kids. My wife (Japanese) always says "good for older people" about any sort of puzzle. She didn't get this from being deceived by Lumosity. The FTC is being very heavy-handed here. It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail. Testimonials being paid for shills? Like, say it ain't so. Every damed commercial you've ever seen in your life has fake people presenting fake testimonials. It's assumed. (Claiming that doing puzzles can stave off Alzheimer's is going somewhat far, though. That disease has specific physiological causes which can't be reversed through brain activity.)

arbitrage 11y ago
The FTC is doing it's job. You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them. This is the same sort of thing that a lot of people criticized the FDA over for going after Cheerios for making claims about being healthy for your heart. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124216077825612187 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124216077825612187 It's a good thing that there are parts of the government out there making sure you can't just make up whatever you want to sell a product.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them. Sure you can. You just have to be selling drugs, rather than video games. I don't quite follow the logic.
  - bsder 11y ago
    Herbalife would beg to differ with your claims.
raverbashing 11y ago
> The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears. Yes, and they trumpeted it several times per day in a variety of advertising channels While the belief may exist, they had deceptive ads turned to 11. You don't see puzzles or similar product being advertised almost 24/7 on tv. I think the FTC is not being heavy handed at all

nostromo 11y ago

Where does that money go? I really hope the FTC doesn't get it. It's a conflict of interest that permeates local law enforcement all across America.

iamchmod 11y ago
FTC puts proceeds of settlement into a "consumer restitution" or "consumer redress" fund. Consumers who were affected by the bad actors, can claim their money back via a separate company which administers that fund. After a period of time, once all affected customers have had time to claim their restitution (usually 12-24 months), then any remaining money left in the "redress" or "restitution" fund goes into the FTCs coffers. I can't quickly find stats on what percentage is usually claimed by consumers. But last time I researched this, it was pretty low with something like <10% of affected consumers actually claiming their restitution and 90% going back into FTC budget.

kevinalexbrown 11y ago

One intuitive way to categorize products is according to the observability of the value. In one class, it's readily apparent: the storage is cheaper, it doesn't fail very often, there's little downtime, my payments always go through, the user experience just feels better, all my friends use it. This doesn't have to be objective, just 'noticeable'. On the other hand, it's hard to judge the value of an encryption app, or a brain training program, because the true value is often hidden. It's difficult to tell, at least for the average consumer whether an encryption app works. There might be signs for the more immediately knowledgeable ('why won't the passwords take special characters, or passwords longer than 12 characters?'), but it's usually a small group. Unfortunately, this is probably going to make it harder for the latter kind of company to grow quickly, because trust takes time to develop. I don't just need to trust that my data will be safe - the entire value of the product depends on my trust that it does what it says. I have no idea if lumosity does what it claimed, but I doubt I could easily tell in a day or two. Contrast that with instagram or a better computer - the value (however large or small) is obvious.

hyperion2010 11y ago

I wrote my prelims on these kinds of 'training' paradigms and there is zero credible experimental evidence that ANY of them actually generalize to things like fluid intelligence or g. For an excellent overview on the real state of the science see here [0]. 0. http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus-on-the-brain-training-industry-from-the-scientific-community-2/ http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus...

Kinnard 11y ago

Did the USDA ever get fined for the Food Pyramid being completely wrong and then being thrown out[1]? Justice, justice? [1] http://www.pjstar.com/article/20151230/OPINION/151239951 http://www.pjstar.com/article/20151230/OPINION/151239951

grillvogel 11y ago

I always wondered how the "brain improvements" from this thing compared to just playing a video game

interesting_att 11y ago

The worst part of this is that Lumosity probably did a cost-beenfit analysis years back, realizing they would make more money via these deceptive ads than the expected FTC fine. For those who don't know- Lumosity is killing it. They can easily pay this fine with their enormous profits.

gobengo 11y ago

Only 2M...?

sidcool 11y ago

I was subscribed to Lumosity for 2 years.

quadrangle 11y ago
Did you use it?
- sidcool 11y ago
  Quite a lot. Religiously followed the schedule. Felt good for doing it. Can't say it helped or not.

coffeevradar 11y ago

I have less faith in public radio because my local station is always playing Lumosity adverts. I'm old enough to remember when the whole "sponsored by" thing being extended to full ads was a controversial development on US public radio. Now they're shilling outright scams and doing so with specific promises that are completely specious.

jordanlev 11y ago
When I was a kid, I remember a talk radio show my family listened to that was one of those consumer watchdog / product review shows. One of the advertisements that you head a lot back then was for purchasing a star (like, getting your name registered somewhere and when a new star was discovered by astronomers it would be named after you?)... It was obviously a scam and all you'd get is a bogus certificate in the mail. Anyway, one day someone called into the show and asked about this product that they advertised, and the host stammered a bit and basically said "well, yeah that's not true but it's all just for fun, a fun gift for people maybe". Was funny to hear him trying to justify this obvious scam because they happened to advertise with the station, even though the entire premise of the show was calling bullshit on other phony product claims.
- mjklin 11y ago
  Did the host get in trouble for this?
- freehunter 11y ago
  My grandmother has a "star named after her". She knows it's fake but she says she appreciates the thought behind it. Like wearing costume jewelry, you know that green hunk of plastic the size of a walnut isn't a real emerald but that doesn't stop people from wearing them.
  - estefan 11y ago
    I'll name a grain of sand after her too if you ping me a $100... :-D

golergka 11y ago

I develop similar product, that focuses on eye training instead of brains. Half of our office is filled with ophthalmologists, with some big names (supposedly — I don't know much about the field). Constant print outs of scientific articles lying around, presentation files stick to the walls (I don't know the proper term, but you know what I mean if you've been into scientific conferences and seminars) and overall vibe really feels like it's a university faculty and not a start-up. Damn, we even have fully equipped ophthalmologist office and get free eye exams when it's not used to measure our beta-testers. I always assumed that brain training apps are just like that. What "did not have the science" really mean in this case? Did they find some errors in peer-reviewed papers these companies have published? Or they just faked it all?

fhars 11y ago
They are exactly like that, in that almost all purported benefits of eye training and brain training alike are not supported by scientific evidence and only very narrow effects exists: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825744 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825744
- golergka 11y ago
  As I said, I certainly don't know enough to argue about it in scientific terms, so unfortunately, I have to resort to trust to authority. So, for comparison with this single paper from 2005, here are recent papers of our lead researcher (who has a cute habit of going around the office in the evening and collecting the forgotten tea cups into the washing machine) on the matter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Polat+U%5BAuthor%5D http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Polat+U%5BAuthor%5D

mrzool 11y ago

Looks like they toned down their website quite a lot: http://www.lumosity.com/ http://www.lumosity.com/ Confront that with the transcript in the original FTC complaint (from page 7): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/160105lumoslabscmpt.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/160105lumos...

wnevets 11y ago

The brain training craze all started with the nintendo's brain age game for the ds.

plg 11y ago

Where is the scientist? The grad school dropout with one peer reviewed publication? http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team

mapt 11y ago

Ugh. Could have been higher. My local entertainment mediums were spammed with this ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGjr_CJ2n98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGjr_CJ2n98 for a solid year or two. The vapid, cultish, yet manic grin. The "Now, with Neuroscience(tm)!". The recursive caricature of a borderline mentally retarded person who now feels that everything is right in the world because she's paid tithe to the Intelligence Authorities. The notion that the commercial is not only defrauding, but actively mocking anyone too uneducated or uncritical or low-self-confidence, to doubt their claims. The several percent of her life it's implied she's supposed to spend engaging in ritual flagellation with repetitive, poorly designed games, in order to diminish the shaming at not 'working on my mind'. It is the singular most offensive scumbag commercial advertisement that comes to mind. It brings on vivid fantasies of punching the smug grin off of this woman, even though I know intellectually she's just a professional actress, and I'm a pacifist.

tedmiston 11y ago

My perspective on Lumosity and its "science" is different because I was a paying customer. I found Lumosity in 2009-2010 and played occasionally, eventually converting to a paid membership in 2012-2013 and playing weekly on desktop and iOS. I was even quite proud to make it to the 98th percentile of all players [1]. (For reference, that's statistically consistent with my score on a standardized IQ test.) Eventually something felt off about the scoring. At one point I distinctly recall them catching flack for changing the algorithm to boost you higher for playing more without necessarily playing better. What I found anecdotally was that playing their games while I was in a distracted state would help me regain focus to the point where I could work on a cognitively challenging task, like a programming project, math problems, etc. afterward that I wouldn't have been able to before playing. I don't claim (or know) whether any longterm difference was made, but I also didn't join for that reason and never really cared about that. Lumosity games gave me a brain reset not dissimilar to a short meditation. I don't know the science behind this idea, and perhaps it's purely placebo effect, but personally Lumosity was helpful to my life. That was my experience. 1: https://twitter.com/kicksopenminds/status/426760502128041984 https://twitter.com/kicksopenminds/status/426760502128041984

balls187 11y ago

Rose-Hulman (my alma mater), should probably revise this: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/academics/2012/rose-hulman-no-9-on-americas-smartest-colleges-list,-cited-for-students-having-best-memory.aspx http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/academics/2012/rose-hulman-n...

ivanca 11y ago

So, televangelist can claim that you need to send a "seed" (money) to get good fortune and get away with it making millions from the most gullible people around, but a brain-training app is penalized for deceptive ads? Shit doesn't add up.

ericdykstra 11y ago

On the topic of games and their actual potential impact on cognition and other aspects of life, Jane McGonigal is doing a lot of interesting research, and I highly recommend reading or listening to some of her material if you're interested in the subject. A good starting point is her interview with Tim Ferriss (http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/07/28/jane-mcgonigal/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/07/28/jane-mcgonigal/), and from there check out her books if you're interested in going deeper. I believe it's in that interview that she says that these kinds of "brain training" games are less effective than just normal games built for fun at developing any kind of cognitive ability. I tried Lumosity out for a trial period to see what it was about, but the games were overly simplistic and not well-designed from a fun standpoint. I also felt like I was hitting 90% of their specific "categories" of games with a single game like Starcraft 2, except a game like Starcraft 2 actually forces you to engage the thinking part of your brain if you want to perform at any decent level.

beilabs 11y ago

Just going to plug a product I was working on for a while. Active Memory (From ABC), was working really closely with a team of neuroscientists out of Australia. Lots of their data goes directly into research programs. Here's the blurb from their site: "Active Memory has been developed in partnership with the University of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. The program is built on a breakthrough statistical model that examines your game results and serves up a customised training schedule that challenges your brain at just the right level of difficulty. Most importantly, the program aims to measure the changes that are happening to your cognition, based on your training. Critically, your participation in Active Memory will contribute to one of the largest studies of its kind into brain training and its potential health benefits." Was a really great team to work with. Had a very different angle from Luminosity and was held to very strict advertising controls through being a part of ABCs commercial arm. https://www.activememory.com https://www.activememory.com

api_or_ipa 11y ago
The ABC is the Australian Broadcasting Corp, in the same category as the BBC and the CBC

atomical 11y ago

How does Cogmed compare to Lumosity?

wodenokoto 11y ago

While the research underpinning the product has always been weak in it findings, I find their goal post very low. If we assume that brain games work, why aren't we comparing this to sudoku, Tetris, trivial pursuit or memory? Or simply reading a book, doing homework? It's not like real life is low on intellectual challenges and if brain training is really transferable, shouldn't solving math problems be transferable too?

rdl 11y ago

Building a business on lies and then paying a $2mm fine when caught (without even 100% probability) seems to be an economically rational strategy. Unfortunately.

tmtinvestor 11y ago

None of this has been around long enough to generate good longitudinal data either way, imo. That said, taking a cognitive assessment across a couple domains, playing a series of games based on those very same cognitive tasks, and then retaking the same cognitive assessment seems pretty suspect. I would think results would be biased, similar to retest effects. At the end of the day, improvement is either transferred to a variety of other contexts beyond gaming or not. I would think that the true test. There would be some value in a diagnostic, something that would identify deficits, and I think Lumosity offers such a thing but I don't believe it has been rigorously validated.

ElginScott 11y ago

Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to sell games than neuroscience. Take an assessment, play games based on that assessment, and take the assessment again --- garbage in, garbage out. The value is in identifying congitive deficits so that proper strategies may be put in place that can be practiced in a variety of contexts such that they are actually transferable to everyday life. There's not a heck of a lot of science in the Lumosity baseline either, since all their data comes from an uncontrolled environment on the web. But there are a number of valid, peer reviewed online neurocognitve batteries available without having to go to a psychologist for a few grand. NIH Toolbox (for researchers) http://www.nihtoolbox.org/Pages/default.aspx http://www.nihtoolbox.org/Pages/default.aspx Mindprint Learning (which has the Penn CNB for children) https://mindprintlearning.com/ https://mindprintlearning.com/ Brain Resource (which has the Web Neuro for adults) http://www.brainresource.com/mybrainsolutions/personal http://www.brainresource.com/mybrainsolutions/personal

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

sprague 11y ago

Is the FDA intervention good or bad? At first glance, it seems like the answer is yes because the FDA action signals that outrageous, unprovable claims do not give offer a competitive advantage. But by making FDA “experts” the sole arbiter of truth, ideas outside the mainstream are harder to pursue. Some people probably really did benefit from the Luminosity, but now it’s much harder to figure out why. Note that the FDA also makes it harder on people like Consumer Reports, Cochrane Reviews, etc. who get fewer donations and customers because much of what they could be doing competes with the FDA’s government-subsidized service.