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Why don't these companies have a scientific strategy running alongside your product/customer/marketing/financial strategies? From a company making bold claims l

by tel 14y ago

Why don't these companies have a scientific strategy running alongside your product/customer/marketing/financial strategies? From a company making bold claims like this I want to see a continual string of increasingly sophisticated trials, each one giving increasingly robust indications of success. Luminosity should be fighting alongside those meta-analyses and investors should be demanding proof points in terms of p-values. Fail (scientifically) fast.

illuminate 14y ago
"Why don't these companies have a scientific strategy running alongside your product/customer/marketing/financial strategies?" Why would you devote any pretense of research and the associated costs if your customers don't care? Investors don't care as long as the money is flowing in and our regulatory agencies are toothless to deal with "health" product scammers.
- tel 14y ago
  (1) it's clear that the regulatory agencies are gunning up to get more involved in "digital health" products which make healthcare claims and (2) it depends who your customers are. If you're only selling to b2c and can afford to never make healthcare claims then you're absolutely right. If you ever want to sell b2b (which is where healthcare dollars are at) then you'll need more.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    For the b2c ones that just means they go "we can't say it does (x) because nasty big-pharma owned regulatory agency won't let us; make up your own mind" campaigns, and most of their customer base will see it as a bonus... There's plenty of money in selling placebos to consumers.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    "it's clear that the regulatory agencies are gunning up to get more involved in "digital health" products which make healthcare claims" They're really not any more empowered than they are with nutraceuticals. And yes, all health products should be regulated, and they shouldn't be as deregulated as they are now. "If you ever want to sell b2b (which is where healthcare dollars are at) then you'll need more." Non-evidence based medicine doesn't seem to be running into any roadblocks.
- babesh 14y ago
  Because after one positive result that they can tout, they have everything to lose and not much to gain from negative results. They are businesses not scientific organizations.
gwern 14y ago
The companies do have scientific strategies; Posit Science, for example, has a bunch of associated studies. They're an integral part of the marketing. > Luminosity should be fighting alongside those meta-analyses and investors should be demanding proof points in terms of p-values. How many $$$ is a p-value or meta-analysis worth? > Fail (scientifically) fast. That doesn't sound very profitable. How does that put more $$$ into the founders' pockets?
- tel 14y ago
  It's product-market fit if your market includes risk-bearing customers. This is, admittedly, less a problem with nebulous mental claims and more of one when it comes to, say, claiming to prevent the onset of Alzheimer's. I'd say healthcare companies in the behavioral/digital/connected health segments that have scientific strategies are outliers. Without regulation it's easy to justify trying to sneak by... but hard to cross to the b2b market.
- hmahncke 14y ago
  Thanks gwern - I work at Posit Science, and that's been our approach since our beginning. When we got started, we ran an initial randomized controlled trial[1] which showed our cognitive training program improved memory, then ran a larger study[2], and then ran the largest study that had ever been done with commercially available brain training program[3]. Other research groups have gone on to show benefits in chemobrain[4], HIV associated neurocognitive impairment[5], and schizophrenia[6]. Different cognitive training programs are different - just like different anti-cancer molecules are different. Some are going to work, and some aren't. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17046669 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17046669 [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16888038 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16888038 [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19220558 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19220558 [4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22918524 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22918524 [5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22579081 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22579081 [6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19448187 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19448187
  - lutusp 14y ago
lutusp 14y ago
> Why don't these companies have a scientific strategy running alongside your product/customer/marketing/financial strategies? Because the two possible sources for such science are neuroscience and psychology. Neuroscience hasn't evolved far enough to offer any meaningful evidence for or against the claims, and psychology isn't even a science as the term is defined (a discipline that supports or discards its theories based on experimental evidence). That doesn't stop outfits like Luminosity, in fact it helps their marketing to be able to offer hand-waving claims that can't be meaningfully refuted. > From a company making bold claims like this I want to see a continual string of increasingly sophisticated trials, each one giving increasingly robust indications of success. Why would they do that? The drug industry doesn't do that, and they have a much higher chance to conclusively prove or disprove the value of their products. But they know better.

by tel 14y ago

illuminate 14y ago

"Why don't these companies have a scientific strategy running alongside your product/customer/marketing/financial strategies?" Why would you devote any pretense of research and the associated costs if your customers don't care? Investors don't care as long as the money is flowing in and our regulatory agencies are toothless to deal with "health" product scammers.

tel 14y ago
(1) it's clear that the regulatory agencies are gunning up to get more involved in "digital health" products which make healthcare claims and (2) it depends who your customers are. If you're only selling to b2c and can afford to never make healthcare claims then you're absolutely right. If you ever want to sell b2b (which is where healthcare dollars are at) then you'll need more.
- vidarh 14y ago
  For the b2c ones that just means they go "we can't say it does (x) because nasty big-pharma owned regulatory agency won't let us; make up your own mind" campaigns, and most of their customer base will see it as a bonus... There's plenty of money in selling placebos to consumers.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "it's clear that the regulatory agencies are gunning up to get more involved in "digital health" products which make healthcare claims" They're really not any more empowered than they are with nutraceuticals. And yes, all health products should be regulated, and they shouldn't be as deregulated as they are now. "If you ever want to sell b2b (which is where healthcare dollars are at) then you'll need more." Non-evidence based medicine doesn't seem to be running into any roadblocks.
babesh 14y ago
Because after one positive result that they can tout, they have everything to lose and not much to gain from negative results. They are businesses not scientific organizations.

gwern 14y ago

The companies do have scientific strategies; Posit Science, for example, has a bunch of associated studies. They're an integral part of the marketing. > Luminosity should be fighting alongside those meta-analyses and investors should be demanding proof points in terms of p-values. How many $$$ is a p-value or meta-analysis worth? > Fail (scientifically) fast. That doesn't sound very profitable. How does that put more $$$ into the founders' pockets?

tel 14y ago
It's product-market fit if your market includes risk-bearing customers. This is, admittedly, less a problem with nebulous mental claims and more of one when it comes to, say, claiming to prevent the onset of Alzheimer's. I'd say healthcare companies in the behavioral/digital/connected health segments that have scientific strategies are outliers. Without regulation it's easy to justify trying to sneak by... but hard to cross to the b2b market.
hmahncke 14y ago
Thanks gwern - I work at Posit Science, and that's been our approach since our beginning. When we got started, we ran an initial randomized controlled trial[1] which showed our cognitive training program improved memory, then ran a larger study[2], and then ran the largest study that had ever been done with commercially available brain training program[3]. Other research groups have gone on to show benefits in chemobrain[4], HIV associated neurocognitive impairment[5], and schizophrenia[6]. Different cognitive training programs are different - just like different anti-cancer molecules are different. Some are going to work, and some aren't. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17046669 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17046669 [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16888038 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16888038 [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19220558 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19220558 [4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22918524 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22918524 [5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22579081 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22579081 [6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19448187 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19448187
- lutusp 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago

> Why don't these companies have a scientific strategy running alongside your product/customer/marketing/financial strategies? Because the two possible sources for such science are neuroscience and psychology. Neuroscience hasn't evolved far enough to offer any meaningful evidence for or against the claims, and psychology isn't even a science as the term is defined (a discipline that supports or discards its theories based on experimental evidence). That doesn't stop outfits like Luminosity, in fact it helps their marketing to be able to offer hand-waving claims that can't be meaningfully refuted. > From a company making bold claims like this I want to see a continual string of increasingly sophisticated trials, each one giving increasingly robust indications of success. Why would they do that? The drug industry doesn't do that, and they have a much higher chance to conclusively prove or disprove the value of their products. But they know better.