Dateline gives expose on informercials: Moisturol

Dateline reported: We first invented a product: a skin moisturizer in a pill. We called it “Moisturol.” We knew it wouldn’t work as advertised because we filled the pills with Nestle’s Quik!

The infomercial about the fake product Moisturol (aka NesQuik)cost NBC Dateline about $140K. Included in the infomercial was an endorsement by a real doctor (a certified dermatologist). The doctor was paid $5,000.00. Apart from the issues with infomercials, one looks at this as of possible relevance to the use of medical experts in malpractice lawsuits. The doctor in the Dateline matter spoke about how good the Moisturol product was, even though the doctor had not tried it at the time. The doctor suggested there were tests, even though there weren't any. One wonders how frequently this might be happening in other matters, such as malpractice actions.

There is a separate point of interest in the Dateline story. Dateline, to show that each individual component of NesQuik (Moisturol) had value, ran a Google search on each component. The idea of doing a more substantive evaluation was not presented, and one was left with the impression that results of a Google search are the definitive answer. Is Wikipedia home free?