The Real Reason the Danny Gonzalez Power Balance Experiment Failed

a lot of you really enjoyed my last video explaining why the danny gonzales tick tock song didn’t go viral so i thought i’d make a new video about his power balance experiment i know a lot of you are nerds just like me who love science and love to learn so let’s discuss what’s going on with danny’s power balance band recently danny came across a youtube ad for a wristband that apparently helps people with their balance and makes them quote unquote feel better this is nothing new and snake oil salesmen have been around for ages as consumers it’s important that we know how to spot pseudoscientific claims so we don’t waste our money on sham products like these balance bands as danny mentioned in his video he remembered the original power balance bands from high school because all of the athletes were wearing them although i’m a little older than danny gonzalez i remember people wearing these bands to improve their game as well what danny didn’t mention was that professional athletes were even wearing these things shaquille o’neal yes shaq wore one and he said that it quote unquote really works and then went on to say there were about three of my teammates with the product on and we won that game by 57 points during the height of the power balance craze celebrities were wearing these bands too actors like gerard butler robert de niro and demi moore were wearing them since then the realm of social media has exploded and celebrities are promoting even more pseudo- scientific products to us in the best case scenario it’s gwyneth paltrow promoting her goop wellness products but worst case it’s instagram influencers promoting flat tummy tees although we’re going to have some fun debunking the bad science around power balance bands it’s crucial that we understand science so we don’t waste hard earned money on these fraudulent products in his video danny gonzalez reads the faq from the power balance site one question asks what does it do will the wristbands work for everyone what does it do well the wristband work for everyone well we have received testimonials and responses from around the world about how power balance has helped people there is no assurance it can work for everyone we make no claims and let the consumer decide based on their experience that’s smart that’s a crazy marketing strategy we don’t make any claims about what our product does we let the consumer decide what the product does i think that’s the slogan of the new iphone after reading this danny lassen jokes about how this is a genius marketing technique although it’s definitely funny how they’ve worded this and this is a huge red flag to anyone even considering buying one of these things there’s actually a good reason why they have this disclaimer dr stephen novella is one of the hosts of the skeptic’s guide to the universe podcast and he has some great courses on medical myths and alternative medicines in his audio course the skeptic’s guide to alternative medicine dr novella discusses the fraudulent claims made by power balance and the parlor tricks they used to sell the bans to people eventually the ftc cracked down on power balance and the company was forced to release the following statement quote we admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims end quote and they also agreed to give refunds to customers who believe they were cheated well despite a skepticism of the power balance band danny gonzales bought 30 of them and decided to do a little bit of an experiment today we’re going to discuss this experiment and what it tells us about the power balance bands and what a better version of the experiment would look like but before we get started if you’re new to the rewired soul make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell here we practice critical thinking and new skepticism to better understand what’s going on in the world while also improving our own well-being and if you’re interested in any of dr stephen novella’s books or audio courses about medical myths and alternative medicines my affiliate links for them are down in the description below one of the reasons i love danny gonzalez and his friends kurtis connor and drew gooden is because they have scientific minds you can tell they’re inquisitive and like many of us they just want to understand how the world works a little bit better the world is a crazy place and even with all of the advances we’ve made in medicine psychology and technology there’s still a lot we don’t know so let’s nerd out for a minute and pretend that danny gonzalez really wanted to see if these power balance bands worked the first thing we need to do is develop some type of measurement for what it means for these things to quote unquote work power balance makes a lot of bold claims but for the sake of this experiment and danny’s video we’re going to focus on one measurement balance danny did a great job in his original video defining a metric for measurement he wanted to see if the power balance ban actually improved his balance in the video danny used the time measurement of mississippi’s to count but in a real experiment we prefer something a little bit more accurate like a stopwatch in this experiment the independent variable is the power balance band so danny was on the right track by doing two different tests first he measured his balance without the power balance band and then he measured his balance with the band on after doing the experiment a few times danny was a little shocked that it seemed like the power balance band actually increased the amount of time he could balance not only that but when he put on all 30 bands he reached his longest balancing time yet i do feel kind of icy though look at this drip here goes if i die don’t what don’t watch this all right well here we go one mississippi two mississippi three mississippi mississippi 28 mississippi 29 mississippi man what the so did the power balance band improve danny’s balance well we’re not sure after danny did his experiments he said that he’s not sure if it actually worked he questioned whether or not he just naturally improved his balance by practicing balancing if you’re trying to be a scientific thinker this is an excellent question to ask yourself some scientists have had to retract their work because they didn’t ask themselves these questions sometimes like the rest of us scientists fall victims to their own biases when trying to confirm their belief they’ll test something until it works when it doesn’t work they come up with reasons why it didn’t work and then when it does work they just stop this is bad science right now in the scientific community there’s a replication crisis and a lot of it is because of this exact issue in our hypothetical situation danny has come to us told us about his results and wants to know if he’s proven that the power balance ban actually works the first step we’re going to take is good scientists is to try to come up with alternative explanations for how we may have had his results the first explanation is what danny mentioned in this video which is that it’s possible that by practicing balancing he would have improved anyways this is actually an issue that pharmaceutical companies run into with antidepressants as well did the medication actually work or would the person just start feeling better due to hedonic adaptation the next explanation is the placebo effect as we discussed earlier professional athletes like shaquille o’neal swore by the power balance band it’s 20 20 and we see celebrities talking about the benefits of pseudoscientific remedies like energy healing and essential oils as well it’s definitely possible that someone might start performing better with the power balance band on or feel better with energy healing but this can be the placebo effect at work in his book suggestible you author eric vance takes a deep dive explaining all of the powerful ways the placebo effect works using antidepressants as an example once again many people feel better when taking the medication just because of the placebo effect in many studies when the person is given a sugar pill rather than the actual medication they’ll claim that it’s helped their depression personally my belief is that if you’re willing to risk the possible side effects but the placebo effect works on you do your thing and in the case of the power balance band if it’s making athletes play better like their lucky underwear that’s great but danny gonzalez hired us to do a job so we need to figure out if this band actually works or if it’s the placebo effect so what do we do we start by making two bands that appear to be the same but one of them was actually fake then we could run two tests with danny one with a real band and one with a fake band if he balances longer with a real band it works right not quite yet as scientists it’s possible that we’re biased maybe we really want the power balance band to fail so we unconsciously stop the stopwatch later with the placebo band to prove that the real power balance is faked or what often happens is a company like power balance has their own testers and maybe they stop the stopwatch later with the real band to improve the appearance of the band since danny might succumb to the placebo effect and we might have an unconscious bias we need to turn to the gold standard for experiments like this which is the double-blind study the double-blind study means that not only does danny not know which band he’s getting neither do we the experimenters although many pharmaceutical companies don’t comply with double-blind study standards it was created due to the fact that these companies often pay their own researchers to run tests when you spend billions of dollars creating a medication or in this case a product and you’re funding the research you’re more likely to skew towards positive results now that danny doesn’t know which band he has and neither do we we can re-run the experiment the next issue we face is that there are all sorts of variables we need to take into consideration what if danny didn’t get that good of sleep last night so it affects his balance what if danny just sucks at balancing or what if he’s better than the average person at balancing and how will we know if it works for other people if we only base it on testing danny the key to a great study is having the biggest sample size possible we don’t have time to get into the nitty-gritty of statistics and data analysis but we want to try this with as many people as possible ideally we’d get hundreds or even thousands of people to participate in this experiment so we could start getting some average balancing times we’d also want to create a third group of people who don’t wear a band at all so we have a control to compare the metrics to with a double blind study and a proper sample size we’d be able to be much more confident in our conclusion about the power balance band but in my opinion we could save a lot of time and resources by bypassing all of this nonsense why because the premise of the power balance band is complete pseudoscience to date we have no scientific evidence of frequencies or energy having any physical effects on the body aside from the placebo effect and that’s why it’s important to understand science we can save a lot of time and a lot of money by not even messing with some of these products because we know the science doesn’t back it while the placebo effect is a powerful thing there are a lot of free placebos out there alright everybody i hope you enjoyed that little video essay about the danny gonzalez power balance band experiment and yeah you know like man for those of you for those of you true rewired soldiers who have been around for a while like i have so much fun i have so much fun making these new type of videos and talking about this and just nerding out like i said in the intro like i’m glad that i’m you know we’re we’re all creating a community of people who just like want to understand the world a little bit better and like i said like this is a silly power balance band but there’s so many products marketed to us and we can when we understand scientific process and what science actually say says about different you know effects and results and things like that we could save a lot of money but the placebo effect could be a powerful thing and you could do ubu right like if a little band makes you feel like you’re superman do your thing all right but anyways i love nerding out about this stuff and just understanding the world and human behavior and all that and i’m glad that you guys do too and again like i’ve been plowing through books i’m at like 230 books for the year so far and that’s why i love recommending them to you guys they’re always linked down in the description their affiliate links so a little bit comes back to support the channel check them out and i know the holidays are coming up and it’s a rough time for some people if you’re interested i personally use betterhelp online therapy and there’s always an affiliate link down in the description below so again you get affordable online therapy during this crazy pandemic it’s nice i can do it from the comfort of my own home we talk like once a week you can do video call you can just do a regular phone call you can text message whatever but yeah if you want to check out better help that’s down in the description below i have some more videos planned for the holidays there’s any topics that you want me to cover if you’re curious about human behavior around the holidays or why we get depressed or anxious or sad or whatever like that you know i’ll see what i can find in the field of science and we’ll start discussing it all right but anyways i’m gonna go now i’m sorry for keeping you so long that’s all i got for this video if you liked the video please give it a thumbs up if you’re new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on patreon or using my affiliate links down below i really really really appreciate it and i will see you next time .