Miracle cures and clairvoyant scams

In 1800s, a magician and a showman Phineas Taylor Barnum wrote a book called “Humbugs of the world”. By ‘humbugs’ he was referring to old fashioned swindles and scams. Many are still being used today, such as fake lotteries, miracle cures and clairvoyant scams, which just goes to show that scams have always been lucrative. In fact, Barnum was such a great trickster, that one of the cognitive biases (the original Forer effect) was renamed after him.

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P.T. Barnum was a magician and a showman in the 1800s. He wrote a book about old fashioned scams, many of which are still used today.

The Barnum effect

The Barnum effect refers to the acceptance of vague personality feedback that could apply to anyone, as highly accurate description of one’s personality. Giving vague feedback is often a component of clairvoyant scams, where a victim will be given universally valid description of their personality as proof that a clairvoyant is genuinely able to see things. Description will be accurate because it is vague and it is true of almost everyone. In the original experiment, psychologist named Bertram Forer used sentences he collected from daily horoscopes and gave them to participants as bona fide personality feedback following psychometric tests. All participants received the same feedback. He then asked participants to rate how accurate the feedback is and was surprised to find that participants were rating it as highly accurate. This is how clairvoyants or psychics can make you feel that they know something about you, when in fact, they are providing such vague feedback, which can apply to anyone and not just you.

Miracle cures

I wanted to also explain a bit about scams people don’t often hear about, unless they have a health problem or an issue they feel too embarrassed to talk to their doctor about - scams offering ‘miracle cures’. Miracle cure scams tend to target people who are either desperate because they have tried everything without success (and this often sadly includes terminally ill people) or those that have chronic or embarrassing conditions. Research found that these types of scams often purport to have cures for diabetes, cancer, baldness, obesity, impotence and loss of libido.

Miracle cures often target embarrassing conditions and use fake testimonials.

Fake testimonials provide social proof we, as humans, often seek when making decisions.

Some miracle cure scams may have professional or legitimate looking appearance, such as being endorsed by health clinics or doctors, but they are largely ineffective and could also be dangerous. Scams selling cures often use social proof cues, such as fake testimonials. Social proof is a known scam technique and is highly effective.
People define their reality by looking to others, how they behave, what they do and what they believe in and act accordingly. Therefore fake reviews and testimonials can be highly effective, especially when we are desperate to believe in something, such as a miracle cure to an embarrassing problem.

These types of scams affect women more than men and are rarely reported, which is why they are not talked about as much as some other types of scams (e.g. financial or romance). Often, people may not know they have been defrauded when it comes to clairvoyant or miracle cures scams, because the product was received (e.g. vitamins or supposed cures) but purchasing a product that claims to cure a disease when it actually does nothing is also fraud and should always be reported to the authorities.