Category Archives: Christmas special 2015

Two Valkee trials declared published junk (X-mas special 5)

Dozens of hilarious details about Valkee Ltd’s HumanCharger scam go untold because they don’t warrant a full blog post. As a present for Christmas Day, here’s the best of all.

The Valkee “research” group has published a number of trial results in unfavorable ways:

The only positive trial with evidence value for Valkee in a scientific journal was the one with the 22 ice hockey players supposedly pimped by earlight to better reaction, published in Frontiers in Physiology.

I say it was, because it had been until now.

It is a real pleasure for me to tell you, that this very special journal series was officially elevated to junk status, by Scholarly Open Access. That’s the No.#1 authority. The list is used by, for example, finnish universities to determine the standing of a publication.

christmas for gloom, frontiers and valkee!

With it, a second Valkee study goes down the tube, which is no longer on their website. It was in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.

The decision was overdue: The fake peer-review was obvious in the ice hockey article, where one of the authors was among the editors, and a dance instructor with no idea was assigned to review it by her lab boss. That’s not a fluke. It’s systematic pseudoscience done by Frontiers.

Is there anything left of Valkee’s evidence, among the ruins?

According to usually well-informed sources, there is one final blow still coming.
A nice Christmas to all and a Happy New Year!

HumanCharger study done to counter critics, disappears again (X-mas special 4)

Dozens of hilarious details about Valkee Ltd’s HumanCharger scam go untold because they don’t warrant a full blog post. As a Christmas present, here are some of such pearls.

When Finland’s Valkee Ltd re-launched their earlight device in 2015 under its new name HumanCharger, there was an exceptional piece among all the PR articles which simply reuttered their press release.

Fierce Biotech criticism

This is the first placebo-controlled trial ever conducted for a bright-light device, the company said.[SIC!] The data may be designed, at least in part, to address allegations widely publicized online that the company’s product is a scam.

Stacey Lawrence of Fierce Biotech had a bright moment.

You may wonder how the company can be forced into a study because of this blog and a few articles elsewhere. And how could they possibly even succeed?

Simple as it is: Valkee bought the “evidence”. The study has disappeared from the net and Valkee’s websites again, but is still available in full from earlightswindle.com/gloom (PDF). The small-print in the last paragraph reads:

We would like to thank Clinius Ltd., an independent company, which conducted the study on behalf of Valkee Ltd.

The study is not done for any scientific purpose and as such unethical from the start. And it’s unclear who the real investigators were. Clinius is a company from Helsinki, Finland.

 

Stay tuned for the next part tomorrow, and the best of all on December 24th!

New placebo-controlled, buried Valkee trial identified (X-mas special 3)

Dozens of hilarious details about Valkee Ltd’s HumanCharger scam go untold because they don’t warrant a full blog post. As a Christmas present, here are some of such pearls.

My deepest apologies. We misrepresented a clinical study in our YLE MOT TV program, and so did all those people after us, who reviewed Valkee’s stuff systematically. We were mislead by the company, but that’s no excuse.

The critical point with Valkee’s earlight is the obvious lack of placebo-controlled studies for the claims in Seasonal Affective Disorder. Valkee Ltd told it’s easy, and they will come up with great results. They never did.

We do know, however, that they attempted such a study 3 times: One was halted, one is completely buried, and the third showed the device to be non-inferior to placebo by a small margin. This result was falsified then, because it would have obviously stopped the whole scam at once.

Juuso Nissilä of Valkee gave an interview back in 2012.

placebo controlled data surfaced

Unlike other bright light therapies, the Valkee unit has been tested in a placebo-controlled trial. ‘You can’t tell, when it’s in your ears, […], it’s possible to have a placebo,’ Nissilä explained.

The trial, with 26 patients receiving treatment and a control group of 23, showed that depression – […] – decreased when the device was used for 12 minutes per day.

That is, to my knowledge, the halted one with 60 persons to participate. It actually had results which never officially surfaced. Valkee’s then-board member Timo Takala, at the same time “researching” his product, told the reporter it was because of low enrollment. That’s what I remember, this part was not broadcasted.

It fits: They had at least 26+23=49 patients of planned 60 when the data was unblinded to the investigators. That’s to say, the trial was dumped then. When the investigators know such interim results, it cannot be continued anymore.

Valkee initiated the notorious 3-group trial in November 2010 with 90 participants, later to be faked. But the “halted” trial was projected to run through that very same winter. Registered completion was March 2011. That means it was not halted for low enrollment. They could have continued. But they recruited patients for the other and declared the first to be failed. Entry criteria and study design were the same.

I won’t comment any longer, it would be too speculative. The real reasons for disrupting the placebo-controlled trial are unknown. Nissilä’s comment reads to me like “symptoms decreased in both groups”, i.e. placebo performed as well as earlight. The similar result as in all other placebo-controlled tests.

Once again, crucial placebo-controlled results remain buried by Valkee Ltd. WHY?
(Ok, that’s pathetic to ask.)

The Christmas Special continues tomorrow. Stay tuned!

HumanCharger endorses Zapper scam (X-mas special 2)

Dozens of hilarious details about Valkee Ltd’s HumanCharger scam go untold because they don’t warrant a full blog post. As a Christmas present, here are some of such pearls.

Valkee recently retweeted a nice, very telling picture.

HeartMath, Zapper, Valkee!

The HumanCharger among other travel essentials. HeartMath and Zapper. – Wait, WHAT?

HeartMath

The HeartMath Institute claims to have technologies to reduce stress, give energy, etc.pp. It says to be built on science. It is detailed here on a professional website:
HeartMath BS

“extensive research and findings on stress, heart intelligence, coherence and the energetic connection between all things are featured”

No further questions. They tell that people’s hearts are magnetically interconnected and communicating. Read it in full on their site, which is quite impressive.

 

The Zapper

The Zapper actually doesn’t differ much in principal structure from the HumanCharger (see picture). As a notorious bullshit, it’s a textbook example for quack. It’s quite famous. People are buying these boxes from different manufacturers. If you have time, look at the site of Dr. Clark, mother of all zappers.

Excerpts taken from Dr. Clark’s : “The Cure for all Diseases” Book

It cures all diseases, right. Not making this up! All diseases are caused by the same single pathogen, an intestinal parasite. A worm, which then can be killed by such a device.

zapper variant

Evolution of scams

So there we have them in a perfect arrangement. Ingenious. I couldn’t have done it better – though I cited the Zapper scam from the very first day on earlightswindle.com.

HeartMath, Zapper, Valkee!

 

The Christmas Special continues tomorrow with a more serious revelation. Stay tuned!

Valkee Ltd doubles the bribe! (X-mas special 1)

Dozens of hilarious details about Valkee Ltd’s HumanCharger scam go untold because they don’t warrant a full blog post. As a Christmas present, here are some of such pearls.

Is there any positive Valkee review written without bribe changing hands? Usually it’s the device itself: Bloggers, journalists etc. get a “medical iPod” (Valkee slogan) for free. Though it’s totally useless compared to the popular music player, and it has no medical effect, it somehow looks nice and that’s what everyone writes after “testing” it.

The review won’t be negative, because it’s 200 Euro a piece. You’re made to think you’re one of the chosen few. Instead, Valkee has given out many hundreds of the “Chargers”. A logical move, as there are thousands unsold devices in stock, and any short blog post is worth more than the few Euros for the 2 LEDs.

With Valkee Ltd going its natural course, this idea metastatizes further:

 

Bribing the same writer twice

Valkee doublecrossed tech writer Robin Wauters back in 2013.

Robin Wauters Tech.eu

Now he has used the trigger words jet lag in a tweet and is provided with the second, identical device.

Robin Wauters bribe 2

Note the word borrow! After Slush 13, the honest one of all the “journalists” really wanted to return the Valkee device. It came out, that Valkee had no wish and no procedure to accept any such return.

 

Doubling the loot

To get rid of the stockpiles, the innovative Valkee Ltd just came up with a new breakthrough idea. Send two instead of one.

Rubbish twice No shit!!

The Christmas special continues tomorrow, with more Valkee buffooning.