Boots No7 Restore & Renew Beauty Serum ($21.99 for 1 ounce) is one of my favorite examples of how this game of claim substantiation works and can easily fool the media. Here are the facts:
A television documentary that aired in the United Kingdom in March 2007 featured the results of a blind test that compared the efficacy of this Boots serum to tretinoin. Tretinoin is the active ingredient in Retin-A and Renova and is also available as a generic. The research was carried out by scientists at the University of Manchester, with the conclusion that this Boots serum was just as effective at stimulating collagen production as tretinoin, yet cost considerably less. That sounds great until you learn that Boots paid for the research. That means the University was making money on the study and so everyone had a vested interest in making sure the study made the product look great.
The study was done blind instead of double-blind, which means the researchers knew who was getting what product. This type of study isn’t as reliable as double-blind studies because, especially when money is at stake, there is a natural bias toward making sure the product in question comes out in the best possible light. Moreover, comparing tretinoin to a “serum” and saying they do the same thing doesn’t tell you if myriad other products would have fared just as well. Maybe using someone else’s serum, say from Neutrogena or Olay, could produce the same results. But because Neutrogena or Olay weren’t the ones paying for the study no one bothered to see if that would be the case. What is distressing is that sunscreen was left out of the equation, which means women might mistakenly believe that all it takes is the Boots serum and your skin will be fine. And finally, if the Boots product is so spectacular, you have to wonder why does Boots continue to sell dozens of other products with different formulas that claim the exact same benefits?
Similar pseudo-science abounds in the cosmetics industry, and I expose it repeatedly when I review products. Believing the claims a cosmetics company makes based on their studies is a risk you don’t want to take because more often than not, the study is nothing more than a marketing ploy and not indicative of anything meaningful.