In 2011, four years after launching prevagen, wisconsin-based quincy bioscience embarked on a study to prove that the active ingredient in the supplement — apoaequorin — improves memory.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education it did not yield the results quincy was hoping for. In fact, the madison memory study failed to show a statistically significant improvement in the treatment group over the placebo group — scientist speak for prevagen wasn’t any better than a placebo at improving memory.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education

But rather than pack it in and start afresh with a new study, like a high school biology student whose hypothesis has been proven wrong but who still needs an A to pass the class, quincy concocted new, less reliable ways to look at the completed study.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education it instructed its team of researchers to scour the data in hopes of finding something — anything — that might support its hypothesis that prevagen improves memory.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education this resulted in more than 30 “post hoc” analyses, which in turn yielded two overlapping subgroups whose members displayed cognitive test results that quincy apparently deemed favorable to its aims.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education these would serve as the basis for claims that prevagen “improves memory.”

It’s the kind of substantiation for a health-related claim that would rarely hold up in court.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education yet that’s exactly what it did last september when a district court dismissed the FTC and new york attorney general’s case against quincy on the grounds that the post hoc analyses of the two subgroups, while so far removed from the initial hypothesis of the study as to render them misleading, provided sufficient support for prevagen’s memory-improvement claims.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education

This week, TINA.Org joined with AARP and its charitable arm, AARP foundation, as well as the national consumers league and a group of advertising law academics in filing a legal brief in support of reversing the dismissal.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education in the brief, TINA.Org and its partners argue that the district court erred in its interpretation of post hoc analyses as competent and reliable scientific evidence — the legal standard for substantiation when it comes to making health claims.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education

Indeed, in the two subgroups that quincy claims are proof that prevagen actually improves memory, only one computerized assessment with purported positive results — a task that measured “visual learning” — was shared across both groups.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education the brief refers to this as “a classic case of elevating likely false positives to the status of a proven claim.”

The FTC and attorney general’s lawsuit was sparked by a 2015 TINA.Org investigation into the deceptive marketing of prevagen and subsequent complaint to the federal agency.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education at the time, the market for dietary supplements and products aimed specifically at brain health was valued at $2.3 billion, as more than one in three people over the age of 70 suffer from a form of memory loss.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education these are the people that quincy targets with its unsubstantiated memory-improvement claims for prevagen, sales of which totaled $165 million as of mid-2015.Cognitive learning theory in nursing education it is a fiction that must be stopped. The brief concludes: