This evening on SBS I watched a documentary about “the truth about” skin ageing. Half of the program appeared to be a plug for Unilever. They had conducted a study into a pill they say rejuvenates skin. This study included a few hundred women (so a fairly small sample size) and made some pretty weak claims based on the good old “before and after” photo. Nobody has independently reproduced or verified the study.

Another section of the docco detailed how “Loreal is the leader in producing artificial skin”. Even without looking up any info, I can tell you that is crap. There are a number of medical companies who are working on creating artificial skin, and most of them use discarded skin as a starter (so grow skin, even if the end product is termed artificial).

In the end, the docco did not deliver. Pleasingly, it did treat the viewer like they had an attention span and told four stories in order, with no jumping all over the place or summarising the entire program after the ad break.

I got the impression the presenter was relaying press releases from cosmetic companies, rather than providing real science. They did mention small sample sizes and whether or not the studies had been peer-reviewed.