ASA Adjudicate on Flyer Complaint
In December 2010, a friend received a flyer through their door from a local church (which I covered previously). It told my friend that the truth could set them free, and gave examples of people being “healed” of severe food allergy, autism, death, “broken heart” and broken vertebra by prayer and baptism. I complained about it to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on three grounds:
- First, I felt that the claims of miraculous healing were unlikely, and that the advertiser would not be able to substantiate the claims if asked.
- Second, the advertisement was irresponsible because it might result in people not seeking medical care.
- Third, it was promoting the idea that attendance at a meeting of the church would result in people being cured of medical conditions.
The ASA (somewhat predictably) declined jurisdiction with regards claims of miracles. This is slightly frustrating from my point of view because they’re making a claim which is easily demonstrated. Either the person had a condition, had the faith intervention and no medical intervention and then didn’t have the condition – in which case a miracle occurred – or one of the criteria is not met and a miracle did not occur.
However, the ASA did consider and adjudicate on the other two issues, and I am pleased to report they found against the advertiser on both counts, and the advertisement is not allowed to appear again.
As a society, we believe it is unacceptable to abuse people emotionally, physically, sexually or by neglect, but it is also wrong to exploit people’s spiritual beliefs. If we do not want to see people being exploited, challenging adverts like this one helps make such behaviour less socially acceptable, and helps to protect the most vulnerable.
This is a step in the right direction: whilst we still cannot apparently challenge falsehoods, we can ensure that religious groups cannot encourage people to act in a way which will have no demonstrable health benefits.
I made a similar complaint to the ASA last year about a group of christian “healers” in my home town of Bath. They have been handing out leaflets for many months claiming to be able to heal a vast number of very serious conditions including cancer. I understand that this particular claim is unlawful under an obscure piece of legislation – The Cancer Act.
Surprisingly, the “work” of this group has been endorsed by a local Lib Dem councillor.
The ASA responded by telling me that they would look into the complaint, but that they would not be able to tell me the outcome! How did you go about getting feedback from the ASA about your complaint?
ASA have always told me about the outcome so I’m surprised to hear that. Sorry, I don’t have more information, perhaps someone else does?
would that we could have all false claims made by religeous groups banned such as the promise of eternal life and many other ridiculous statements. Rod.
Hi David,
Congratulations on your recent success! The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) are my favourite penpals, so perhaps I can contribute a few comments.
You mention that the ASA declined jurisdiction on the issue of miracles. You complained that they church probably couldn’t substantiate the claims that miracles of this type can take place.
On this point, I think the ASA are correct. They have to adjudicate on what the leaflet actually says, not the wider context. I noticed that the word ‘miracle doesn’t appear anywhere in the leaflet, and neither do any claims about the power of miracles in general.
The issue, then, is only the five testimonials that actually appear. As you probably know, the ASA’s regulatory code (the CAP code) has special rules for testimonials [1]. The relevant rule is “Claims that are likely to be interpreted as factual and appear in a testimonial must not mislead or be likely to mislead the consumer”. If you had challenged whether the testimonials were misleading, rather than whether miracles in general can be substantiated, the ASA would probably have investigated that challenge.
Charles Plummer notes that his own complaint disappeared from view without explanation. This is actually a GOOD sign.
The ASA do not have the resources to formally investigate every complaint they receive. When they think advertising in clearly in breach of the code, and when similar advertising has been banned in the past, the complaint is passed straight to their compliance team. As Charles says, Compliance don’t tell complainants the results of their work. However, they are very effective. Instead of having to wait several months for an adjudication, as David did, the advertising Charles saw would have been removed almost immediately.
Rod mentions the possibility of getting the ASA to ban a broader range of religious claims. In the case of eternal life, this is not likely to happen – the delivery of your immortal soul to the pearly gates of heaven is not a claim capable of objective substantiation, so it’s outside the ASA’s jurisdiction.
[1] http://www.cap.org.uk/The-Codes/CAP-Code/CAP-Code-Item.aspx?q=CAP+Code+new_General+Sections_03+Misleading+advertising_Rules_Endorsements+and+Testimonials#c135
Hi David – did you get a chance to talk to them to see if it was all true? I would trust your stance more if you could say for CERTAIN that those claims were false just like I would trust the churches stance if they could prove they were CERTAIN of these healings/cures. It just sounds like that you went only by the pamphlet and not actually checked it out yourself. I’m in Chch NZ so I can’t go and check just as much as I can’t really trust what you say.
Hi Mike
Interesting question.
First, as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s impossible to prove a negative anyway, so you’re asking if I’ve achieved the impossible, and whilst the Red Queen may find it easy to do several impossible things before breakfast, I am but a humble human being and must, yet again, report that I have failed.
Second, there isn’t a burden of proof on me, I merely suggested to the ASA that the claims could not be substantiated, I do not need to prove they are false for the advertiser to asked to demonstrate that they are true. The ASA declined to explore the possibility of substantiating the claim, so this wasn’t even the basis on which the ASA upheld the two complaints they did investigate. However, I can say with some certainty that to date, despite having attended a number of services of various churches of this type, I have not yet seen a healing which has resulted in the reversal of severe pathophysiological abnormalities; neither has anyone else. Now, it’s possible that the one time we’re not looking that miracles galore are occurring, but it’s far more likely that the claims are, if not false, at least misguided and are definitely extremely unlikely.
Third, I have some knowledge and experience of the practice of medicine, and so find the claims as they are made in the advert unlikely in the extreme, and frankly distasteful. I’ll explore them one by one:
Fourth, if the documentation for each of these cases is less than complete (and my experience of claims of miracles is that they are normally based on subjective claims, sometimes dodgy, sometimes extremely dodgy), and it’s impossible to differentiate between natural and supernatural causes, then the ethics of promoting prayer/baptism as the source of a curative cause is extremely dubious (hence the adjudication by the ASA on 2 points). If, however, the church does have extensive documentary proof of the causative effect of their faith, then presenting that to the ASA (for which they were invited and given time) would have negated the ethical concerns.
On that fourth basis alone – the fact that the people making the claim were unable to present evidence that would have shown the ethical basis of their advert – I am willing to wager substantial amounts of money that the claims cannot be substantiated and are therefore flawed. Coincidentally, in the sense I am using it, flawed does not mean that people lie, or even that they do not believe, merely that in the natural world their claims cannot be supported.
So, yes, I am CERTAIN (for a given value of certainty, given no assertion can ever be made with 100% certainty) that the claims are false. And you don’t need to trust me, you just need to apply logic, knowledge and statistical likelihoods to the assertions.
I appreciate your comment; I always like to have to justify my own position
Cool man, very interesting read. I can understand where you’re coming from. You sound like you def. know your stuff in terms of medical practice etc.
It’s just that, if it did happen to them (Russell, Granville and the young girl) and you talked to them and you still had the same stance, wouldn’t it then, the stance you made, be more solid? Did the pamphlet go into much detail? It would seem to me that you wouldn’t be able go into too much detail on an A5?? sized paper (I’m just guessing here) whereas in medical text books/journals there is enough room to go into a lot of detail and then you could draw a logical medical conclusion. But if you just went on a pamphlet, it would seem a bit unfair to draw a conclusion on nothing much. Unless you checked it out and talked to these people, how would you know for sure? I would think to draw a logical and well-grounded decision you would need both sides of the story. You obviously have a lot of one and only some of the other.
You wrote – “However, I can say with some certainty that to date, despite having attended a number of services of various churches of this type, I have not yet seen a healing which has resulted in the reversal of severe pathophysiological abnormalities; neither has anyone else”
These people seem to have experienced these healings so it would be unfair to say that no-one else has and you obviously haven’t been to a church of this type or else you would/could have possibly seen it when you attended.
Would you actually go to one of their meetings, talk to whoever is on the pamphlet first hand, and then make a logical and fair decision based on what you saw and what you already know?
There are two issues with that approach.
The first is that their perception of events may not include all of the factors relevant to assess the claim. I, by the way, have no doubt that the individuals in question (who I am sure are lovely, genuine, honest people) believe that they had supernatural life-changing events happen to them. Indeed, I have in the past spoken to such people whilst a regular attendee of similar religious institution, and I don’t see any reason to believe that these people would be fundamentally different to them. Assuming that the church has at least not-misrepresented their view, I am not sure what I’d get out of talking to them (apart from possibly concreting a couple of views, namely that desperate people will believe anything and that evidence can make very little headway against faith).
The second is that no-one has, on invitation, presented evidence that the claims can be substantiated, specifically in this instance or broadly. I far from the first person to question to the authenticity of miracle/faith healings. As yet, no-one has adduced evidence to support the claims, and have identified flaws ranging from outright dishonesty to misattribution and faith-in-the-face-of-evidence. At what point does it become reasonable to assume claims are flawed? At what point do we accept that the burden of proof is on the claimants not those who are sceptical of the assertions?
After all, I would pretty unlikely to believe my neighbour if he said he had a fire-breathing dragon in his garage, regardless of how much I spoke with him…
All that said, it would make an interesting research project to explore the ethnography and social epistemology of people who believe they have been supernaturally healed…
Cheers David – good chatting with you. This was my very first online debate with a total stranger. Thanks, It was educational and great to hear your point of view. And yes I would have to agree that it would be a very interesting research project.
No problem, I hope it was as pain-free as possible!