Skeptical Update Headon: Apply directly to the wastebasket

In late 2006 we were besieged by commercials for a product called Headon. We didn’t know what it was supposed to do, only that we should apply it directly to our foreheads.
Apparently some people thought that applying something to their forehead was a good idea, because the company is still in business.

Headon has no dosage restrictions, and is claimed to be completely safe. Why? Headon doesn’t really contain much more than wax. Headon is supposed to relieve head pain. How does wax do this? It doesn’t.

Homeopathy is a pseudoscience that claims that extreme dilutions of chemicals retain the effects of the chemicals, and that “like cures like.” So, by that reasoning, by putting a non-existent amount of irritant in wax, the wax will suddenly take on curative properties.

After a couple of centuries of homeopaths peddling their “cures” the evidence is in: homeopathy does not work. Any effect from homeopathic products is no greater than placebo. Furthermore, there is no known mechanism by which homeopathy could work. All the science we have indicates that homeopathy is bunk, and its practitioners are quacks, if occasionally well meaning quacks.

That being said, Headon probably isn’t dangerous. Putting wax on your forehead when you get a headache won’t do anything physiologically to benefit you, but it won’t do much to harm you beyond the money you wasted on it. The problem is when people visit homeopaths instead of real doctors who could actually help them. If you have a serious illness, modern medicine is a far better bet than magic for a cure.

Don’t be afraid to call quackery out for what it is, because there is always someone out there to make a buck off your gullibility.