Lumosity fined $2M for deceptive ads of “Brain Training” app | Hacker News Reader

Lumosity fined $2M for deceptive ads of “Brain Training” app

ftc.gov

601 pointslpsz251 comments

All of these brain training products are suspect. Evidence for far transfer (training in one task transferring to a different domain task) is surprisingly hard to find, and empirical findings otherwise tend to disappear or diminish when replicated.

Many of the pro-brain-training camp have already begun to shift the goal posts. First it was 'simple games increase IQ,' which turned out to be difficult to prove when well controlled studies were performed. Now it's more along the lines of 'These simple games might have preventative effects against age related declines!,' which is an even harder claim to actually prove given the difficulties performing well controlled studies on aged participants.

In the cognitive science world, if we discovered a solid far transfer paradigm, especially one which transferred to something like G(eneral Intelligence), it would be our anti-baldness pill\flying car\4-day cellphone battery. People thought that these working memory transfer effects were the real deal and got very excited about it, money poured in, and the water got muddied by all these scientists with conflicts.

I obviously don't put much stock in working memory training. I wish it worked like they said, but I don't think it does. If far-transfer shows up at all, it's tiny, and doesn't persist after delay.

I was under the impression that Dual-n-Back[0] had real benefits. Is that not the case?

[0] http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

Gwern's done extensive research into this, and his meta-analysis has shown there's "a net gain (medium-sized) on the post-training IQ tests"[0, 1].

0: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis

1: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ

Why is this downvoted? I was under the impression that Gwern did solid resarch and was well respected in the HN community.

Because JumpCrisscross's post [0] implies that w1ntermute cherry picked a component of the Gwern meta-analysis to prove his point while the next paragraph refuted it.

[0] : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10846443

This is really great! I'll have to look into this when I have a little while. Thanks for passing it on. Just on a glance, I disagree that it really shows much of an increase though. Just glancing at the forest plots of those effect sizes tells me that this isn't a very strong effect at all (if it's there).

And there is also the so called 'file drawer' effect. I was at one of the big cog psych conferences a few years ago when a colleague was asking around -'Do you have any failed to replicates for WM training?' Everyone was so excited with the original Jaeggi 2008 paper, went out and tried it, and had a tough time replicating what turned out to be a severely flawed study.

Not to say that I'm not open to the idea. I'd love for it to be true, I just think large-effect-size effects are not often mired in the controversy that this one is. They're hard to find.

Literally the next paragraph:

"The size of this increase on IQ test score correlates highly with the methodological concern of whether a study used active or passive control groups. This indicates that the medium effect size is due to methodological problems and that n-back training does not increase subjects’ underlying fluid intelligence but the gains are due to the motivational effect of passive control groups (who did not train on anything) not trying as hard as the n-back-trained experimental groups on the post-tests.

The remaining studies using active control groups find a small positive effect (but this may be due to matrix-test-specific training, undetected publication bias, smaller motivational effects, etc.)"

http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis#analysis

So it definitely transfers 'near'. You'll get better at the dual-n-back test. And possibly other visio-spatial working memory tests. But the question of far transfer- will it make you smarter- is probably not. Here is a link to a 2015 meta-analysis that looks at the question of working memory training (including dual-n-backs) transferring to other working memory tasks:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/084fvteji1tyz8t/2015-schwaighofer....

Melby-Lervag & Hulme, 2013, is also pretty damning.

That's exactly, if my understanding of changes happening to brain while performing any activity in general is correct, what should happen - you get better at doing that activity. So, unless your work contains some kind of dual-n-back activity, you are not getting better at it. You get better at work by doing work, not by playing brain game.

I am really happy they got fined for this deception.

From a meta-analysis:
" The 20 studies included here were all completed between 2008 and 2013....Sample sizes of treatment groups varied between 7 and 36 participants, and control groups between 8 and 43"
"net effect of n-back training on Gf outcome measures, about the equivalent of 3–4 points on a standardized IQ test"
ie: very small groups, tiny effect. Sounds dubious to me, like much research in the social "sciences"

Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory:a meta-analysis http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/au-e...

Considering the standard deviation for IQ is 15 points, I wouldn't drink an extra glass of water per day for another 3-4 IQ points, let alone play a training game for any extended amount of time. 3-4 points is statistically meaningless.

One standard deviation is fairly significant, though.

I think a lot of people would do mind training once per day for a possible 3-4 IQ increase, honestly. I would.

It's also possible that it only results in a fairly small general IQ increase, but a larger increase in some specific facet of recall or cognition.

It's also possible that it results in an IQ increase only for a specific subpopulation that you may or may not be a part of, e.g. the linked metanalysis says that "international studies tend to find more transfer than U.S. studies" and it does not seem as though the effect for the U.S. studies was significantly different from zero.

0.2 standard deviations is a very large effect.

In the metanalysis, Hedges' g is 0.24. Hedges' g is a less biased measure of Cohen's d, and Cohen d between 0.2 and 0.3 as a "small" effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_size#.22Small.22.2C_.22...). Of course there are plenty of caveats to assigning importance to effects of different magnitudes without regard to what is being measured, but this isn't a very large effect.

Here are a few ways you might be interested in measuring effect size:

- if the environment changes such that this effect becomes operative, what sort of change should I expect in terms of z-scores? ("how does the effectiveness of damping sound with crumpled paper compare to the effectiveness of mining with dynamite?")

- if I aim to change a quantity using this effect, what sort of change can I expect relative to the existing known ways of changing the quantity in question? ("How many laborers could I replace with one bundle of dynamite while ending up with the same size of hole?")

- if I see a change of so many standard deviations in some intangible variable, (a) what sort of effect will I see further down the pipeline in the variables that I really care about, or (b) is that amount subjectively worth the effort? ("If I have $600,000, can I make a bigger hole by hiring and outfitting diggers, or by buying and detonating dynamite?")

You're insisting on the first of those questions and only the first. The comment I responded to is explicitly phrased in terms of the third question, and 3-4 IQ points is quite significant in terms of tangible knock-on effects. It's also worth noting that an intervention yielding 3-4 IQ points is staggeringly large in terms of question #2, losing out to curing malnutrition but beating basically everything else. It is so large as to seriously damage the credibility of the result, given what we already know about efforts to raise IQ.

How can you claim a quarter of a std dev is statistically meaningless? Seems to me that's dependent on the confidence intervals involved not the standard deviation.

"Considering the standard deviation for IQ is 15 points"

The standard deviation for the distribution of IQ is 15 points.

The standard deviation of the errors of measurement associated with measuring IQ is 3 points.( ie: the standard error of measurement aka SEM)

I would be willing to have 3 fingers of my left hand ( not including my thumb ) amputated to improve my IQ by 1 standard deviation.

For more on Standard Error of Measurement, see http://www.csus.edu/indiv/b/brocks/Courses/EDS%20245/Handout...

That link is a PDF.

What is your point? The parent made no error in his language. The inferred meaning of 'standard deviation' in this context is 'standard deviation for distribution'. The parent referred to an improvement of 3-4 IQ points, not standard deviations.

I believe the point is that standard dev for distribution is complete meaningless when talking about measuring a person's iq and increase thereof.

> The parent made no error in his language.

The parent claimed a 3-4 point in an individual's IQ is statistically meaningless by point to the standard deviation of IQs for an entire population. That is either (a) misguided or (b) intentionally misleading.

The standard deviation of a non-identical population has no relation to the statistical significance of a change for an individual.

Let's say the standard deviation of heights for males is 2.8 inches; that is what some of the internet claims. Let's use two standard deviations as statistically significant. That means, if someone woke up one day and was 6'3" instead of 5'10", that was not a "significant change" because they only changed in height by 5 inches.

Standard deviation for a non-identical population is completely unrelated to the significance of changes for an individual.

Out of respect for people who don't like being surprised, that link is a PDF.

If you're of average IQ, an improvement of 0.2 standard deviations is about 8 percentiles of the population - the difference between being 15th in the class and being 12th or 13th. May not sound like much, but if we assume that translates directly into income (i.e. people of 10th percentile intelligence earn 10th percentile salaries) then that's the difference between a salary of $52k and $63k.

At the high end it's even more pronounced as the tail thins. Going from +2SD to +2.2SD is the difference between 98th percentile and 99th.

Bearing in mind how loosely IQ and income are correlated IRL, and the opportunity cost of brain training vs devoting the equivalent time to job-specific learning, I'd say it's far from clear a 0.2 SD boost in adult IQ should lead to any change in income at all.

If it was 1 SD, the difference in ability would be rather more difficult not to notice.

4-day smartphone* battery, I can remember when I only charged my mobile telephone once a week.

I'm sure that same mobile telephone was capable of far less than a smartphone. I remember my Nokias being able to last for days on end (unless I played a lot of Snake!)

While I wouldn't trade my current smartphone for one of those, I do miss the lack of battery anxiety, and wish the manufacturers would make models for those of us who aren't obsessed with thinness. An iPhone 6 at 5/8" (15mm) would be awesome.

Nope, it's just bad software engineers. Africa has those pretty very battery friendly "smart phones" and they do everything that yours does, probably without the fancy games.

I've been tweaking my Android tablet's code (10" screen), profiling, setting up all of the possible GPU optimizations (whole UI is whenever possible displayed using it) and this is the result.

http://imgur.com/QLN17SS

This is about a one year worth of work but I guess Android engineers don't have time to optimize per device.

You could probably squeeze out the same for any mobile device, although iPhone is probably not that configurable.

Africa's "smart phones" (whatever that means) are usually a feature-phone with a web browser. Much less capable than a smartphone

Turn off wifi and 3G/4G see how long your smartphone battery lasts. Oh I did this recently with an old phone, it lasts around 4 days as well (and that's with an old battery)

Also a lot of apps abuse smartphone processing updating how many times per minute

But screens and processing power still cost a lot of energy

Really want to read more about it. You should do blog or do a write-up on it on xda-developers about it.

Hell you should release a mod for whatever tablet you are using, and make a killing.

While that is pretty awesome, and I've played with Android tweaks to get better battery life in the past, the software doesn't seem like the biggest consumer of power. These days I generally I see >80% of battery power being used by the screen, so no matter how well optimized the software/cpu/gpu is, actually using the device is going to kill the battery.

Added: With Timur's Kernel and some rtc/wakeup/governer tweaks I can get at least 2 weeks on my nexus7.

amazing, write this up please!

I just wanted to share my thoughts, which are simply: "Thank God!"

I've been working on a startup: http://synaptitude.me/ (demo is old)

Essentially, we can do some of what Luminosity claims (and have independent studies to prove it). Every time someone goes: "Oh it's just like Lumosity" I have to go through and explain the difference. My wife has a degree in neuroscience and I minored in BioE, and we both just HATE Lumosity. Their misleading ads seriously damaged the public perception, and there is no way they can assess anything they claim (if it is even possible).

That's pretty much why my startup is working on our applications. We feel there is a market and can definitely help people, but just "brain games" (without feedback/guidance) don't do anything.

So many bouncing buttons. Can't concentrate.

I would like to see how this sort of thing could benefit people with traumatic brain injuries as it would be a great service to people suffering from this sort of malady but also probably easier to measure the effects on this group compared to a bunch of average individuals.

Cheaper EEG sensor interfacing for (neuro)feedback would be a major step forward. Using the EEG sensor with various game interfaces is possible, and has been beneficial for patients with Traumatic Brain Injury.

With TBI, the issue is often connectivity between parts of the brain, and that can be measured as EEG Coherence.

I agree with lettergram and others, that without feedback these type braingames don't really do anything.

This is what SenseLabs (https://senselabs.com) are doing with a product called Versus (https://getversus.com). It's an EEG sensor connected to an iPad where you play games.

Disclosure: I used to work for them.

That is one area we really want to study, to see if there is any way we can benefit. We are sure it can monitor concussions, but to what extent is still to be determined.

However, we don't have funding at this point (partially because we want to avoid Luminosity's fate of being tied to growth), so we are just focusing on getting a fully developed product that some psychologists we are working with would use.

Are you investigating efficacy for ADHD at all? I know "cognitive training" has been used in therapy for it, and the symptoms overlap with TBIs.

Sounds great, there's obviously a huge market for this.

Just don't be seduced by the dark side. Be honest with how accurate your tools are. The results will speak for themselves.

It's one thing to say that there are independent studies that demonstrate the validity of your interventions, but it's another to say that there is a current ecology of research and researchers that support your intervention.

Can you make that stronger claim? Is there a review article that we can Google?

There is not at this time. However, as mentioned in another product we only have a prototype at this point. We are working with therapists and psychologists to bring the product further (essentislly using them for feedback). The goal being, at some point in the near future we get there.

The challenege is doing that without a large financial backing. It just takes longer.

Thank you for your disclosure.

The worst that can happen to a good small company is that some overhyped and overfunded 'start-up' enters the field and spoils the trust built slowly and over a long time between the consumers and the suppliers of goods and services.

This is unfortunately not rare at all and the 'hotter' a market seems the more of these BS artists will enter. In the end you have the same product and the same relationship with your customers but you're going to end up spending a lot of time differentiating yourself from the snake oil peddlers and the damage they can do is very real.

Good companies have gone under in the wake of the scandals triggered by the fakers. Playing a long game while your field is being torn up by people playing a short game is extremely frustrating.

> The worst that can happen to a good small company is that some overhyped and overfunded 'start-up' enters the field and spoils the trust

Like FB destroyed the trust of social networks, and ruined it for themself and their competitors? The same with chat with WhatsApp and other pseudo secure chat apps.

This implies that the general public ever really cared about the fact that their messaging is secure.

Spot on. None, and I mean NONE of my non-tech friends give a damn about their email/messaging not being really private.

This is actually a form of corporate sabotage some companies use. You'll find it interesting to read about Coca Cola's Tab Clear[1].

Basically, Pepsi introduced a soda called Crystal Clear that was gaining momentum in the "clear soda" market. Coke wanted to sabotage the public perception, so they introduced "Tab Clear" and made it taste so terrible, that both products failed within 6 months. After that, no one wanted to touch clear soda for a while. (That is, until Coke reintroduced another drink called Sprite).

[1]http://thedailyjournalist.com/pen-and-pad/corporate-sabotage...

Sprite and 7-Up have been around longer than that.

"reintroduced"

Wait, what? Sprite had been around long before Tab Clear came and went.

Well he did say "reintroduce". Looking quickly at the Wikipedia page, it looks like Sprite did have a rebranding effort done in 1994, so... maybe?

It seems much more likely that it was simply a poorly conceived and poorly marketed product.

I feel that I am in this position right now vis-a-vis internet startups in general: lots of overhyped and overfunded "start-ups" promising security, privacy, and freedom and delivering pervasive surveillance, imitation security, and extortion.

Woah. I like this. Signed up. This is the specific reason I wanted a system like this.

Please don't spam me with updates :P. Just awaiting access to Beta.

I think Ive sent an update every few months (so you know we arent giving up).

Thanks for signing up!

What do you do that's different?

A different claim, same bullshit "science".

" According to the CDC one in five Americans have ADHD, anxiety, or depression.

Impacting productivity, focus, and mood.

We can help, with ThinkSuite!"

Chemicals can't even help me, how would ThinkSuite? If I could cure this crap with a site, I would, but we can't.

Actually, we respectfully disagree. The Lumonosity doesn't have any feedback to their systems, and are therefore WAY different than ours. We cannot claim it will solve your issues, but it could (stress the could) help. We accomplish this by providing neurofeedback[1].

[1] http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/

Essentially, we can help cope with the issues by helping you identify bad practices. That's it. Turns out many of us don't realize when we start losing attention, or feeling sad. We just suddenly realize we do feel bad. The idea is to make you more aware of what makes you feel bad/lose attention, when you start feeling that way so you can better control it.

Here are some links to some studies (more are coming out soon):

[2] (2009) http://eeg.sagepub.com/content/40/3/180.short [3] (2009) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.... [4] (1995) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8801245

The end goal of our system is to use it in combination with other therapies, drugs, and medical professionals to determine the effectiveness of a therapy/drug on an individual and improve it. Coupled with that we can provide better coping skills, and our own therapy called neurofeedback (as mentioned).

I have ADHD. I'm fully aware of my impulse control issues. Identifying bad practices is NOT treatment.

Are you seeking help? If not, I suggest seeing a psychiatrist - they have the most experience, much more so than general practitioners.

Appreciate you asking, and great advise - I am :-) actually, when I was younger my parents sought help early for me, and through some of the best specialists in the field. Then for a decade and a half I went it along, and whilst I did ok, overall I think I struggled so I'm getting professional medical help, as well as seeing a professional life coach experienced in helping people with ADHD.

It's been good overall!

Can you share your experience on what worked/didn't work for you (medical and non-medical) and why? I ask 'why' as most ADD/ADHD people have similar symptoms, but their root cause can vary. Your answer can give insights to some of us out here!

There is no magic cure, I still struggle with it. But it's easier than before, I found medication helps but ONLY if you have it reviewed regularly. Seeing someone to discuss issues with is very helpful. I see a guy who isn't a medical professional but is older and has the condition himself - that's incredibly helpful :-)

Probably less helpful to others is my supportive wife. I probably drive her to distraction at times, which feels awful as I don't mean to. But she forgives me and ensures I don't forget to take my medicine, which is unbelievably important. That's obviously not helpful if you aren't in a significant relationship though.

Wish I had more words of wisdom. I'm still working it all out myself to be honest. I think it's a lifetime struggle, but worthwhile fighting.

> Chemicals can't even help me, how would ThinkSuite?

That doesn't follow. Drugs aren't automatically better or more effective than non-drug therapies.

But known, proven therapies are better than apps with no peer review.

That's not a factual claim. Known, proven therapies are known and proven, period. They aren't automatically better than an untested therapy, that would mean no new therapy could ever be an improvement.

Your statement is illogical.

FWIW I'm making no claim here as to the efficacy of either proven or unreviewed therapies just calling out unsound reasoning.

We provide a form of neurofeedback[1] therapy.

[1] http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/

Essentially, we can help people identify bad practices and create better ones.

Turns out many of us don't realize when we start losing attention, or feeling sad. We just suddenly realize we do feel bad. The idea is to make you more aware of what makes you feel bad/lose attention, then you can control it (to a degree).

This actually sounds very close to a need I have been trying to fill, and failing to do so. I have many of these same issues, and can't stand dealing with touch feely psycs (I am way to practical for that nonsense). I realize that many of my issues are simply behavioral and can be overcome through simple training, and have been seeking a "personal trainer" of sorts.

Is this an actual product you have out in production now, or is it still in the planning stages so far? I would be very interested in further developments. I am a Software Engineer by trade, so please let me know if you would like any beta testers.

Cheers and thank you!

PS: You finally got me to register an account here ;)

I wouldn't quite be going "Thank God!" if I was you on this news. It could end up that now when people go "Oh it's just like Lumosity" it could potentially be with the added tinge now of "Are you trying to mislead me too?"

Not only that, but the site tells me that it can help treat "ADHD, anxiety, or depression" and improve my "productivity, focus, and mood."

If I were in this space, I'd start putting "not FDA evaluated" disclaimers on my site and marketing, and temper my promises right away.

Yup. This is bad news for public perception. Now you have to fight against the new negativity plus being a competitor.

Even if you're more effective, you not have to prove you're not a fraud.

This is awesome. My wife is a PhD in Applied Cognition with a dissertation on working memory and attention (including improvement in games and activities). She similarly hates Lumosity. (If you ever want an independent review or consultation of your science, I'll put you in touch.)

Thanks! I may reach out in the future, we could always use feedback :)

Out of curiosity, aside from the normal advice re: sleep, diet, exercise, etc., is there an everyday/attainable activity she doesn't hate for working memory and attention?

It comes down to five things (in general; not specific to WM & attention, but inclusive of):

1. Diet - Eat reasonably well.

2. Physical Exercise - Can be as simple as walking around the neighborhood; just stay active.

3. Stress Relief - Stress wears you down; get zen when you can.

4. Socialization - Just being around other people helps you stay sharp.

5. Brain Exercise - Different and varied challenges. Crosswords, puzzles, board games, etc. all help. Something that's complex and engages your long-term planning engine is great: she likes strategy games (like Starcraft or Age of Empires). Basically, find ways to put your brain to work. And like physical exercise, variance is key.

The problem with Lumosity and #5 is that any "improvement" you see isn't improvement in mental acuity, but efficiencies in repetition.

That's great feedback, thanks. You articulate my concern well in the last sentence. I actually do a ton of word puzzles, board games, and video games, but sometimes I wonder if I'm doing much more than building vocabulary and a little hand/eye, along with whatever specifics apply to that puzzle/game. I should probably try to develop more patience with strategy games, since the "planning" part is probably key there.

Thanks again!

Wait... you offer a subscription as a "treatment plan" for "ADHD, anxiety and depression"??

You might seriously want to reconsider the wording thereof. Even metaphorically, that sounds dangerously close to something the FDA might object to.

What I'm about to write is about the extent of my knowledge on the subject, so don't assume I know more that justifies my thinking: CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) has has been shown it can be effective even if done with computer software, and in the UK is something the NHS either offers or pushes people towards (I think, if I remember correctly, using a private company who provides the service online but an NHS referall gives you a code to access it for free). Based on this, I would assume it's perfectly possible to offer a "treatment plan" for "ADHD, anxiety and depression", but I have no idea what regulatory hoops, if any, would need to be cleared. (I also don't know if your parent comment's company does offer CBT, or if not whether what they offer does work.)

The different computer guided CBT programmes are tested for efficacy before they get recommended for use.

Here's some (quite old now) guidance: http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta97

I use that url to give some idea what process is used to assess and recommend computer based CBT.

I just browsed your site and don't understand exactly what the product is. In the first part of the video I see someone browsing the web with some kind of mood widget. Then I see an e-reader. Are those your product? How does it work? Thanks

So your "app" helps with "ADHD, anxiety and depression" U-hu.

Help me understand something. So you link to papers where some kind of biofeedback is used to help with Anxiety, and then you claim that you do some kind of biofeedback as well, and therefore .... you are helping with Anxiety. Is that about right? Are those your "independent studies"?

I'm on mobile so my question shall be short:

I have three small kids, my youngest, before she could even speak, was able to pic up an iPhone, unlock it and browse to various apps including camera, gallery and netflix and take pics, view them or select a movie to watch. Yet she couldn't yet formulate a word.

So given this, I assume that there is a great deal that an iPhone like device could be leveraged upon to accomplish greater learning...

How would you propose this be done with the ubiquity of such devices at this time?

I have some theories but I'd like to hear your position first.

I'm not still not sure whether this is either a) a joke b) a cultural difference in what's 'acceptable' quackery or c) you're just very uninformed.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and opt for c). Sorry to pop your bubble, but your startup is not going to work out in the current form. All I see from your website, is a company founded by three students who read some papers about EEG and want to sell me a treatment for ADHD and depression using home made beta software and a consumer grade! EEG headset.

At least in my book, this is flat out quackery and one of the reason that Neurofeedback is still seen in many places as 'alternative medicine' and does not have a stellar reputation although it has been shown as effective in a couple clinical trials.

First of all don't even try to conduct a survey on treatment efficacies to make up for missing data on your own website. Please leave this to clinical trials.

Second, you compare your pricing model with allegedly professional Neurofeedback providers, by actually not offering any in-person session and non-medical EEG devices? Is this really not a joke?

Let's just ignore for now the fact that consumer grade EEG headsets don't even offer the precision you need for proper Neurofeedback training. e.g. Emotiv epoc offers 14 channels@128Hz, where real EEG hardware usually has at least twice the sampling rate, a greater bandwidth, and 19-21 channels (up to 256 in research).

Most importantly, how do you even think your treatment works? You can't just look for any occurrences of "slow-wave power" and then tell your patient that he should pay more attention now. That's not how any of this works.

You need to identify signal signatures in response to standardized stimuli. In patients and "healthy" controls. You need to account for the whole spectrum of any mental disorder. Even though they are usually defined as in the DSM as "one disorder" with couple of symptoms, on the individual level there is not much commonality left among all the people with the "same disorder". So you need to "reassemble" the disorder bottom-up, by clustering different sub-types based on biological markers (EEG profiles). Then you got to match them to their clinical diagnosis. If you have any meaningful data left by then, you might be able to identify a small set of markers that exhibit a high predictability, that a given patient belongs to a presumed subtype. Existing commercial databases are of the order of 1K-4K healthy controls and hundreds of patients. Then you can start a training using those markers. Now comes the fun part of assessing the clinical efficacy of your new marker set. You'll get a whole bunch of sub-types like high frontal delta/low dorsal alpha/low beta, high alpha/low beta, or low theta/high dorsal alpha/"higher" frontal beta, etc. ... each of which has to be trained accordingly.

I really don't see how you want to recreate all of this on consumer EEG hardware. And if you opt for the current medical hard&software/databases: then what's your value proposition? How do you want to beat current model, of a licensed practitioner guided by a supervisory psychologist? Because this setup gives you the efficacy of the literature and it costs a hell lot of money.

Please don't sell any "treatment" that you can't provide. I can understand that it is a very tempting and huge market: "According to the CDC one in five Americans have ADHD, anxiety, or depression.", if you really want to make money there, go to big pharma, if you actually want to "cure it", go to research. But I really don't think, that selling this quackery is going to benefit anyone.

disclaimer: this is neither my field, nor do I have any stakes in that particular game, just happen to know some people doing actual research on this matter.

Yeah you're no different.

grep "I've been working on a startup"

back to the actual topic, I suppose8 it could be done today. (If you're gonna say, 'just wait til our benevolent omnipotent robot overlords show up' then I encourage you to sukkit.) But if you're going to replace human teaches, then you need your computer-aided learning program to know that I (for example)

\ find graphics challenging, but narrative is easy to keep track of.

\* remember events and experiences well, not so much facts and figures.

\* get unproductively competitive over desirable assignments.

And so forth x1,000,000. This is all the stuff that gets glossed over by strong AI proponents, and I think pushes it way out into the 2-300 year timespan the way we're going now.

I think that strong AI most likely to be a materials science breakthrough.

You need a better landing page.

Wanted to you let know that the pricing table on the comparison page cuts off: http://paste.click/AJrEyb And unfortunately it's your price that gets cut off.

Seems pretty interesting though, signed up for Early Access.

Are those studies about your product in specific?

Saving this comment for later

The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears. It is a popular belief that doing mental work staves off cognitive decline (including age-related). I bet you that everyone at Lumosity actually believes it because their mother told them that when they were kids.

My wife (Japanese) always says "good for older people" about any sort of puzzle. She didn't get this from being deceived by Lumosity.

The FTC is being very heavy-handed here.

It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail.

Testimonials being paid for shills? Like, say it ain't so. Every damed commercial you've ever seen in your life has fake people presenting fake testimonials. It's assumed.

(Claiming that doing puzzles can stave off Alzheimer's is going somewhat far, though. That disease has specific physiological causes which can't be reversed through brain activity.)

> It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail.

No, it's not. It's like they were appropriately fined for profiting off unproven medical claims.

> Testimonials being paid for shills? Like, say it ain't so. Every damed commercial you've ever seen in your life has fake people presenting fake testimonials. It's assumed.

And they're labelled as an actor representation. Giving them a pass because it's "assumed" is irresponsible and harmful to those who might not otherwise know.

To add another reason why his analogy was irrelevant and misleading, no one got thrown in jail. Lumosity got fined 0.01% of what some bank fines have been over the past few years.

Relax, I was just posting a deliberate piece of hyperbole to test whether someone might want to fine me.

Then why the downvote? If I was just falling into your deliberate trap, you shouldn't be taking it out on my karma.

I never simultaneously downvote and reply to something. That shouldn't even be allowed. The downvote can be regarded as a form of reply to something that doesn't deserve the normal reply. Under that view, it is contradictory to apply both.

Why shouldn't that be allowed? I downvote and reply to comments I've downvoted if the comment is worth responding to, ie, I say why I downvoted. I don't downvote to disagree, I downvote because the content of the comment is not constructive or useful to the thread.

In short, I just downvoted you and then replied to you.

Why do you assume you know who downvoted you?

That is also a good point, though I don't see how the comparison to what banks were fined is relevant or enlightening.

I like to contextualize the real magnitude of 'illions. There are many people who hear "$2M" and think it's a large fine. It's actually relatively modest, and I wanted to provide a point of reference for people to know how modest.

I think a better yardstick would be comparison of fines for similar offenses.

> The order also imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, which will be suspended due to its financial condition after the company pays $2 million to the Commission.

The whole piece is pretty unclear about whether they're shutting down Lumosity, or shutting down Lumos Labs while somehow not shutting down Lumosity.

Oh, I guess I misparsed this originally. I understood it as "The order imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, and Lumos Labs will be suspended due to its financial condition after paying $2 million".

But, the article as a whole is more intelligible with the meaning "The order imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, and the judgment will be suspended due to Lumos Labs' financial condition after it pays $2 million".

> Giving them a pass because it's "assumed"

...is the law of the land in USA

It's called "puffery"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

> In law, puffery is a promotional statement or claim that expresses subjective rather than objective views, which no "reasonable person" would take literally.

US Supreme Court has ruled that lying in ads is protected speech, up to some non-specified boundary:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100211/0133368126.shtml

I don't see exactly what that has to do with passing off solicited and compensated customer testimonials as unsolicited and uncompensated (as far as I'm aware).

And as the FTC's actions have indicated, making unproven claims of direct medical benefit is not simple puffery.

> The FTC is being very heavy-handed here.

It might be done to make an example out of them. Also imo a more accurate comparison would be Dr. Oz and the "wonder powder" he advertises

I disagree wrt. carrots and shills. We already tolerate too much lying to people, but there have to be some limits. Common misconceptions are one thing. People trying to defraud you (and let's call a spade a spade - if you're lying to me to take my money, you're defrauding me) by turning common misconception into what looks like a scientific fact? That's way out of line.

They are just selling fun puzzles. What you see is what you get. Even if you wrongly believe that puzzles have some benefit they do not, you don't have to buy puzzle from them; the false belief applies to all puzzles you can get anywhere, including free sources: Internet, library books, ...

There seems to be evidence that mental activity saves off cognitive decline --- just not that it can cure Alzheimer's and such.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100302151242.ht...

http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/15/mental-exercises-are-m...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201403... (#6 - brain training games)

http://www.newsmax.com/Health/Health-News/mental-activity-de...

http://www.healthcentral.com/alzheimers/c/42/151976/exercisi...

They are not just selling fun puzzles, that's the point. If they just said "Buy our fun puzzles!" we wouldn't be here.

The FTC is doing it's job. You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them.

This is the same sort of thing that a lot of people criticized the FDA over for going after Cheerios for making claims about being healthy for your heart.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124216077825612187

It's a good thing that there are parts of the government out there making sure you can't just make up whatever you want to sell a product.

> You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them.

Sure you can. You just have to be selling drugs, rather than video games.

I don't quite follow the logic.

Herbalife would beg to differ with your claims.

> The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears.

Yes, and they trumpeted it several times per day in a variety of advertising channels

While the belief may exist, they had deceptive ads turned to 11. You don't see puzzles or similar product being advertised almost 24/7 on tv.

I think the FTC is not being heavy handed at all

> The FTC is being very heavy-handed here.

Are you kidding me? A quick Google search turned up revenue of $24 million in 2013. 2014 and 2015 numbers did not come up on my quick search, but I'd imagine based on the amount of advertising they do it's at least held steady. And then there's the many millions of investment dollars they received before that. $2 million is not even a slap on the wrist. It's like blowing in their ear gently.

As far as Lumosity believing their own claims, first this is not a mom and pop store. They have the resources to know for sure whether or not it's true, and they have a duty to find that out before making claims. Second, I don't buy it. Anybody with half a brain knows it's baloney.

Lastly, as far as I can see they're not being forced to make amends to the customers they ripped off, nor to make public apologies for false claims AND if they can gin up some bullshit study to support their claims (shouldn't be hard with their resources), they can continue making them.

Also the whole time this lawsuit has been going on, I've been hearing claims that don't differ much from the ones in violation on NPR constantly. Just enough to skirt the law.

Heavy handed my left foot.

$24 million revenue isn't net income after all the expenses and taxes.

2/24 is 8%. How would you like to be fined 8% of your yearly salary?

Make $100k as a developer? $8k please!

Good thing I'm not blowing gently in your other ear; that would be 16 thou.

> Make $100k as a developer? $8k please!

If my career was based on a bunch of lies I would expect a lot worse. That's kind of my whole point. If I sold a website to somebody based on claims that it would do something it doesn't do, I would expect them to sue me for 100% of their money back plus damages, not just 8%.

And keep in mind with Lumosity, $24 mil is the revenue for 2013 that I could find, who knows what they actually made in 2014 and 2015. If we assume it was just flat that's $72 mil, which makes the $2 mil fine 2.7%.

And one would have to assume that a company operating in this gray area would have some inclination that they would eventually be fined/sued and set up a fund of some sort to cover it.

It would be like making $100k as a developer, but using some shady quasi-legal loopholes on your taxes to save a bunch of money. Presumably you would set some aside in case it ever turned out that what you were doing was not considered proper by the IRS. My point is that the eventuality of this couldn't have come as a surprise to the company.

> If my career was based on a bunch of lies I would expect a lot worse.

That is irrelevant to the question whether or not 8% of your yearly income is significant. I was only countering the opinion that that $2m is nothing to a company with a $24m yearly revenue (regardless of why it is taken away).

I'm sure people who drive after a night of heavy drinking don't like having their vehicle impounded, their license taken away, and being thrown in jail. But what do percentages or likability have to do with the application of law?

Are you sure the FTC wouldn't go after a carrot company marketing carrots as improving vision? I've never seen them try, have you?

From experience using lumocity games, I am sure people who develop these games don't use them - there were annoyances and blockers which are too obvious and constantly present during the game process. If they were playing themselves they would fix it I think.

Also their approach to metrics was too unscientific.

"It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision"

I assume that you know that there is no evidence for carrots improving vision.

If someone sold carrots labelled as "Said to be good for your eyes" - or some other variation, then no problems.

However, if they state that there are medical studies showing that carrots improve your vision, then those claims should be checked out and action taken if not true.

The FTC went after POM Wonderful for overstating the health benefits of their pomegranate juice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POM_Wonderful

> It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail.

Exactly. Want to tell carrots? Go ahead. Want to sell carrots by telling people with failing sight that it will improve their vision, and talk them into a monthly fee for carrot delivery? You'd better have some research to back that up.

Based on the ads and no little fine print at the bottom citing any real science, I was a skeptic from the outset. Never did any real research to find out if their claims were inflated - or even viable in the first place. Apparently when challenged by the FTC they didn't have anything solid to show in their defense.

Oh, and then there's this bit:

>The complaint also charges the defendants with failing to disclose that some consumer testimonials featured on the website had been solicited through contests that promised significant prizes, including a free iPad, a lifetime Lumosity subscription, and a round-trip to San Francisco.

Classic huckster move, not surprised, glad they got caught, etc.

Ah, consumer testimonials. I pay very close attention to those. If I learn they're fake, I blacklist the business. If someone is willing to lie to people like that on their page, I don't want to have anything to do with them.

I am under the impression that almost all customer testimonials are fake. They are just too easy to fake one, and hard to catch one, so I assume that they are all lies.

That's my default assumption too. I don't trust them at all, though I still give the company the benefit of doubt. Innocent until proven guilty, etc. And hell, even if they're not lies, they're usually so vague as to be meaningless anyway.

It's also worth noting they don't have to be faked, just mis-represented.

You can cherry pick sections of long testimonials.

You can cherry-pick testimonials themselves.

:-/

Alternate spellings of cherry--pick used to annoy the anally retentive :-)

Great article on this trend of investors/entrepreneurs with no scientific background thinking they can get into the space and "shake things up":

Silicon Valley is confusing pseudo-science with innovation[0]

> I don’t think all the VC firms that are moving into the space know what they’re doing — so I think you only need a couple of nasty failures to get them to pull back. Take Pathway Genomics, for instance, which was selling a test that was supposed to tell you if you had cancer. I say "supposed to" because it turns out no one — including Pathway Genomics itself — had done any research whatsoever to determine the test actually did what it said it did. The company sold the test directly to patients through a regulatory loophole, and after we wrote about it, the FDA got wind and told them to knock it off. But Pathway had investors: Edelson Technology Partners, Founders Fund, IBM Watson Group. You’ll notice these are not health care firms.

In the next couple of years, we're probably going to see companies like Nootrobox, Stemcentrx, and Theranos go belly up, after which SV investor interest in the healthcare industry will dry up, just as it did in the energy industry after the late 2000s.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10642070/2015-theranos-ve...

I don't know much about Stemcentrx - why do you think they will fail? Their science page sounds reasonable; antibody-drug conjugates don't seem far-fetched and I don't think they're the only ones pursuing that therapeutic paradigm.

Stemcentrx does seem the most reasonable of the three companies I mentioned from a scientific standpoint, but this area is fraught with prior failures[0]. It's just the nature of the industry. Also[1]:

> The company says that they’re doing 150 xenografts a day (!) But their rationale is that trying to culture CSCs in vitro runs the risk of having them change character too much, making any assays using them unreliable. My guess is that they’re right about that, but my worry is that xenograft tumors themselves are already unreliable enough to cause trouble (and I have no idea of what happens to them after you “passage” them through multiple animals). Xenograft models are, of course, well known in oncology drug discovery, but one of the things that’s well known about them is that they’re the pure example of “necessary but nowhere near sufficient”. If your drug fails in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic. But if your drug works in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic, too. The odds get better, but they go from “extremely likely not to work” to “pretty likely not to work”, and you take what you can get in this business.

> So how’s Stemcentrx doing in their cell hunt? They’re not going to tell Technology Review, naturally, but as the article mentions, the entire CSC hypothesis has been taking some hits recently. It’s still very much an open question. How many tumor types are driven by stem cells, whether they can be targeted (and how), how to tell when such an approach is indicated at all – there are a lot of open questions. It seems very likely that there are cell types inside a given tumor population that are more aggressive and likely to spread, but whether that narrows down to a particular stem cell group, I don’t know. What if there are 234 cell types in some particular tumor, and (say) fourteen of them are the ones to really worry about? What then? Will there be a common mechanism to target these, or not?

0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha...

1: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/cha...

Lumping Stemcentrx in with the others is extremely ill reasoned imo. The most basic of google searches show some pretty impressive stuff being done there.

http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/302/302ra136 http://www.esmo.org/Conferences/Past-Conferences/European-Ca...

While the second link is only phase 1, those are some impressive numbers.

Finally, their clinical trials page (http://stemcentrx.com/clinical-trials.html) shows two Pfizer collaborations, pretty sure Pfizer has a pretty good pulse on these things.

As I stated in the sibling comment, Stemcentrx is indeed much more reasonable than either Theranos or Nootrobox. However, a $5B valuation is still absurdly optimistic when you consider the comps. There have been massive setbacks at Verastem even after getting to phase 2[0], and Verastem's science originated from a top MIT research lab.

0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha...

Agreed, that is a lot if true, the MIT article[0] gave a 3 billion number and also mentions that the latest valuation was determined by Fidelity not some silicon valley VC firm. This all leads me to stick with the assertion that I would not lump the three in any way.

0: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541006/peter-thiel-back...

The latest valuation is $5B, according to the WSJ[0]. The latest (series G) round was led by Fidelity, but Founders Fund, ARTIS Ventures, and SV Bank also participated in it[1]. Also, there's actually talk of Fidelity bringing sanity to startup valuations[2,3], rather than pumping them up even higher.

You're right that Stemcentrx, unlike Theranos or Nootrobox, doesn't smell of SV hucksterism. However, rather than comparing Stemcentrx to Theranos or Nootrobox, compare them to OncoMed, Verastem, and Stemline, which have current public valuations of $700M, $65M, and $116M, respectively. And none of them ever exceeded $1.2B in their public valuations.

0: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/09/16/peter-thiel-b...

1: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/7db717567346f07e604...

2: http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/snapchat-isnt-the-only-startup...

3: http://fortune.com/2015/11/12/fidelity-marks-down-tech-unico...

The cofounder Michael Scanlon has a neuroscience PhD.

http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team

Read his bio more carefully - he doesn't have a PhD, he was a PhD student. He does have an MS in neuroscience though[0].

0: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/founder-stories-lumositys-m...

He never actually got a PhD:

> Prior to founding Lumosity, Michael was a neuroscience PhD student at Stanford University.

> Michael graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Psychology.

Even if he had one, having "a neuroscience PhD" isn't even close to enough experience necessary to fulfill the expectations of running a robust, legal and ethical medical technology company.

Lumosity seems like one of those companies that bit off more than it could chew. Then, to fulfill investor expectations, they started to engage in shady and unethical sales practices.

> In the next couple of years, we're probably going to see companies like Nootrobox, Stemcentrx, and Theranos go belly up, after which investor interest in the healthcare industry will dry up, just as it did in the energy industry after the late 2000s.

More likely, what will happen is the the BS artists that smell money will go away (and their financiers) leaving the field again to those that were active there before a few high profile exits brought the smell of blood.

Good point - I edited that sentence to say 'SV investor' instead. There were, are, and always will be people outside of the technobubble innovating in fields like healthcare and energy, they just won't get plastered on magazine covers and fêted by the Twitterati.

> they just won't get plastered on magazine covers and fêted by the Twitterati.

Most science and real innovation are not sexy, if you start seeing a CEO prior to achievement on a magazine cover that's a red flag imho.

If pseudo-science sells, it feels like innovation! There is like all this new money discovered in new places where it wasn't before. Innovation, right in my pockets!

Hmm... on the one hand, I've always thought lumosity was obviously woo.

On the other hand, you could make exactly the same claims ("1) improve performance on everyday tasks, in school, at work, and in athletics; 2) delay age-related cognitive decline and protect against mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease; and 3) reduce cognitive impairment associated with health conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD, the side effects of chemotherapy, and Turner syndrome, and that scientific studies proved these benefits") about an "herbal supplement" and you'd be legally in the clear. Why is Lumosity's suite of product offerings more similar to prescription medicine (heavily regulated) than to dodgy supplements that might or might not contain mostly meth (basically unregulated)?

Supplements industry lobbied congress to pass a law exempting them from FDA regulation.

Sure -- but Lumosity can't be prosecuted under FDA regulation, unless the scope of "food and drugs" has undergone some fairly significant expansion. I assume supplements are still subject to the FTC.

There is no plausible argument that it's fine to make unsubstantiated health-related claims in order to sell your edible product that is intended to be bioactive, but not in order to sell your video games. In terms of potential harm to consumers, the ratio there could best be approximated as 100-to-0.

I agree. But it's about politics, lobbyists, and money.

I'm impressed your comment hasn't gotten downvoted to oblivion. Every time I express this same point I get my ass kicked (Soon to be professor with Ph.D in molecular biology and 2 years of medical training all at top 5 institutions).

Looks like the crowd agrees with my post (currently at 38 upvotes), but it suddenly got pushed down below several others a few minutes ago. Perhaps intervention from the mods?

mentioning intervention by mods is always good for a few downvotes. Sad but not unexpected. Can't avoid the po-po wherever you go.

About a year and a half ago i got dragged into the hype (via family subscription) - and actually enjoyed the games for about 3 days. after that, the fact that they had a total of about 5 variations, with totally predictable ordering, got really boring and i went back to 2048. You don't have to be a neuroscientist to see how this kind of predictable repetitive activity will make you "get better at it" every time you play...

Cancelling took a couple of emails and threat to dispute the CC charge.

Hooray for FTC!

I was a big fan of the restaurant server game. There was tons of variation in customers and their orders as you progressed in levels. Enough so that I could never really master that one. It felt like a good memory exercise though.

> Cancelling took a couple of emails and threat to dispute the CC charge.

Now that is a reason I can understand. But fining them on the basis of questionable claims -- almost every product in the world does that.

One of their recruiters reached out to me - in a former life I worked in a neuroscience lab researching neurogenesis to improve memory problems from a neurodegenerative disease (regular exercise can actually do wonders for that).

Would have been a really neat to revisit my academic passion, but as I started to read papers that had been published on their product, I wasn't convinced of its efficacy. That, and all of the studies used people with real problems, and they're marketing it to the general population as a way to "train" your brain, which feels wrong to me.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think F.lux is equally as guilty of this. None of their cited studies are done with light from an LCD screen (which is prone to white light bleeding), or using their app.

Is flux trying to sell you something? I thought their software was free.

What does cost have to do with anything? We're talking about its ability to do what it claims.

It's a fair point; the difference, my counter-point, if you will, is that F.lux is free. If F.lux's claims prove to be false, then at worst, the application is misguiding or misinforming. Lumosity, on the other hand, is outright fraudulent, if their claims are proven wrong and continue to profit off of it.

I have less faith in public radio because my local station is always playing Lumosity adverts. I'm old enough to remember when the whole "sponsored by" thing being extended to full ads was a controversial development on US public radio. Now they're shilling outright scams and doing so with specific promises that are completely specious.

When I was a kid, I remember a talk radio show my family listened to that was one of those consumer watchdog / product review shows. One of the advertisements that you head a lot back then was for purchasing a star (like, getting your name registered somewhere and when a new star was discovered by astronomers it would be named after you?)... It was obviously a scam and all you'd get is a bogus certificate in the mail.

Anyway, one day someone called into the show and asked about this product that they advertised, and the host stammered a bit and basically said "well, yeah that's not true but it's all just for fun, a fun gift for people maybe". Was funny to hear him trying to justify this obvious scam because they happened to advertise with the station, even though the entire premise of the show was calling bullshit on other phony product claims.

Did the host get in trouble for this?

My grandmother has a "star named after her". She knows it's fake but she says she appreciates the thought behind it. Like wearing costume jewelry, you know that green hunk of plastic the size of a walnut isn't a real emerald but that doesn't stop people from wearing them.

I'll name a grain of sand after her too if you ping me a $100... :-D

See, you gotta do it right. Make it romantic. Stars are romantic. It has to be on a huge scale, too, so it sounds impressive. And then you need something tangible, so there has to be a piece of paper, preferably showing how they could see the thing named after them. Stars are easiest, but you could do custom constellations named after them. Shouldn't be too hard to hack up a python script that draws pictures over a star map and prints out certificates of the brand new constellation.

I'd buy that for my grandma. She'd like that.

One thing about NPR: they definitely know their market.

The ads are always quite careful to avoid promising anything outright. "brain training," "testing," "compare your score with global averages." Technically, Lumosity IS training your brain... to do better at Lumosity games.

It's obviously vaguely promising cognitive gains, but it manages to talk around it extremely well.

I think if you should have less faith in anything it's the increasing attitude (at least from what I see) that public media is not worth funding with tax dollars or personal donations because it becomes a mouthpiece for a political agenda you may not agree with, so they have to rely on advertising stay on the air.

That said, there does appear to be some political leaning to NPR, but it's not nearly as bad as the cable news outlets.

My perspective on Lumosity and its "science" is different because I was a paying customer.

I found Lumosity in 2009-2010 and played occasionally, eventually converting to a paid membership in 2012-2013 and playing weekly on desktop and iOS.

I was even quite proud to make it to the 98th percentile of all players [1]. (For reference, that's statistically consistent with my score on a standardized IQ test.)

Eventually something felt off about the scoring. At one point I distinctly recall them catching flack for changing the algorithm to boost you higher for playing more without necessarily playing better.

What I found anecdotally was that playing their games while I was in a distracted state would help me regain focus to the point where I could work on a cognitively challenging task, like a programming project, math problems, etc. afterward that I wouldn't have been able to before playing. I don't claim (or know) whether any longterm difference was made, but I also didn't join for that reason and never really cared about that. Lumosity games gave me a brain reset not dissimilar to a short meditation.

I don't know the science behind this idea, and perhaps it's purely placebo effect, but personally Lumosity was helpful to my life. That was my experience.

1: https://twitter.com/kicksopenminds/status/426760502128041984

Every time I heard these ads I cringed. As a scientist (with plenty of experience in the neuroscience domain) I knew there was no way they could back up those claims reliably.

I definitely noticed when they toned down the claims, but even then I was surprised they were still going...

+1 FTC

NPR plays ads on the radio about Lumosity and brain training, nearly every day for the last year here.

It seemed ED to be more of a "We will give you a chance to raise an arbitrary number over time if you pay us" and heavy marketing ploy.

Seems like if cow clicker got viral and took peoples money.

I was just thinking that. I only know of this product because it's so advertised on NPR. Time to replace these ads with something even more useless.

They play those ads on NPR here too. They always make me think about what my dad (a psychologist) told me about IQ tests: all IQ actually measures is how well you do on IQ tests. It's entirely possible to study for the test and improve your IQ. Of course, doing this doesn't make you any better at anything useful, but it might make you eligible for Mensa. (My dad is very skeptical when it comes to psychometrics.)

That's a valid criticism if the test taker is trying to cheat, but if its yourself trying to find out your own IQ and you didn't train for it, it's still a useful predictor of academic success.

Absolutely, there's some correlation if the test-taker isn't tainted. But I bring it up here because Lumosity basically tells its customers they're getting smarter because they're getting better at its "brain-training" games, when it's pretty clear that the only thing they're likely to get better at is the games.

>The order also imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, which will be suspended due to its financial condition after the company pays $2 million to the Commission.

So does that mean after paying this fine, Lumosity is in financial trouble?

Generally "suspended" means "we won't fine you now but if you screw up again, you're paying up". Kind of like probation. The reason given gives me thought that they also simply don't have $50M

It means they don't have $50m. I'd say that shouldn't matter, we don't give the poor a discount on parking tickets either (actually, we usually make them more expensive).

I have seen a proposal to make the cost of tickets based on value of the car. The thinking is that a person with an Audi is not at all disturbed by paying a $20 parking fine, so it isn't an incentive. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement.

It would most likely only create incentive to fake the value of the car so that it seems lower than it is.

Well I don't think you'd just walk up to someone and say: "I want to write you a ticket. What's your car worth?" It would have to be pegged to make model and year or something like that.

You don't get to fake anything, they look it up in a "book". States that tax you on plates/tabs based on the car's value do exactly that. State says a 2013 Audi is worth $20K, then that's what you're getting taxed on whether you think the car is worth that much or not, and mileage is not taken into account. Annoying, too, when NC said the motorcycle I was riding at the time was worth $3K. Umm, yeah, not with 120K miles on the clock, it's not. The state did not take me up on the offer to sell it to them for $3K, which is the way I think it ought to work. Kind of like the style of car racing where you can only modify it within limits, and anyone can offer to buy the car after the race for $XXXX.

> The state did not take me up on the offer to sell it to them for $3K, which is the way I think it ought to work.

Supposedly Athenian taxes were assessed this way. The government handed out a list of tax obligations, and if you thought your tax requirement was heavier than somebody else's who was richer than you, you could challenge them. A challenge meant they could choose either to swap tax obligations with you, or, if they didn't believe you were poorer, to swap all their assets for yours.

Sorry, I assumed that the state will be taking taking mileage and general "condition" into account, and personally I'm used to people mostly buying used cars - and used car market isn't exactly a paragon of business honesty.

The UK does something like this, they call it "means adjusted" fines.

Usually it's done if you challenge a ticket and they still find you guilty. Then they may adjust the fine relative to your financial condition. (I'm not sure how they find that out, eg if they talk to HMRC or other).

Does this only work to decrease the cost of the ticket?

Popular in the EU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

I don't think the UK does it much, except in the sense that if you lose a case you're liable for costs, and for a driving offence judges are more likely to apply a statutory criminal fine.

Smaller offences have an upper fine limit, and that won't be raised based on income. But it's always bigger than the token Fixed Penalty Notice fine you get from the police. Serious offences have unlimited fines, so judges can get more creative with financial penalties.

Should be easy to implement, as the plate number is taken, so cross-reference that to make and model, cross-reference that to the book value. A mobile app for government ticket writers could be prototyped in a weekend with access to the right databases (I guess you really just need the DMV data, then cross-reference to Edmunds or something).

As for the proposal, I'd be for it. I make enough that under some circumstances I very well might just pay the $35 than drive around looking for a parking space. When I am in a car, though, it's usually in our ten year old Scion that cost $20K brand new, so I don't know that would it would be such a disincentive for me (and my illegal parking is a rare occurrence regardless, and usually by accident), but might work for the general case.

Doing so would put many people out of work and throw families into chaos. Not everyone there, and certainly not all their families, deserve that.

Besides, these fines aren't based on actual damage to society. I suspect the total is high because Pharma would laugh at a $2M fine, and the FDA wants to keep their teeth.

That's not a good reason for a business to continue to exist. A business should provide real value to consumers. Duping consumers is not ok, even if it helps to employ people. If you want to maintain the organization's structure then upper management should resign and the business can refocus under more moral leadership.

Looks like they toned down their website quite a lot:

http://www.lumosity.com/

Confront that with the transcript in the original FTC complaint (from page 7):

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/160105lumos...

Marketplace has done an interesting investigation on those types of mind games. http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2014-2015/brain-train...

Ugh. Could have been higher.

My local entertainment mediums were spammed with this ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGjr_CJ2n98

for a solid year or two. The vapid, cultish, yet manic grin. The "Now, with Neuroscience(tm)!". The recursive caricature of a borderline mentally retarded person who now feels that everything is right in the world because she's paid tithe to the Intelligence Authorities. The notion that the commercial is not only defrauding, but actively mocking anyone too uneducated or uncritical or low-self-confidence, to doubt their claims. The several percent of her life it's implied she's supposed to spend engaging in ritual flagellation with repetitive, poorly designed games, in order to diminish the shaming at not 'working on my mind'.

It is the singular most offensive scumbag commercial advertisement that comes to mind. It brings on vivid fantasies of punching the smug grin off of this woman, even though I know intellectually she's just a professional actress, and I'm a pacifist.

I have something of a litmus test for companies where I just assume any company that advertises a lot via "live reads" on radio/podcasts is not to be trusted. Lumosity, LifeLock, etc.

There are outliers for which I wouldn't quite say "not to be trusted" like Dollar Shave Club and Blue Apron, but even in those cases you are, IMO, overpaying for a vanishingly small amount of convenience.

I think it holds up pretty well though that putting a lot of effort into advertising via "live reads" on radio and podcasts is a negative indicator as to how much you can trust a company.

So I take it you don't aren't munching on your Naturebox and mailing the government (using your Stamps.com scale) your application to start a business (that you created on LegalZoom) making websites via Squarespace, all while listening to an audiobook you got from Audible, before dozing off on your Casper mattress wearing nothing but your "Me Undies"?

...I listen to too many podcasts.

Ugh. I know it's just an example, but stamps.com is one of those "borderline legal frauds", a step away from phone slamming. Opt-in renewal, online signup and "you have to call us to unsubscribe".

Now I think of stamps.com as the literal devil -- it might be possible to get a good deal, but you really better know what you've agreed to.

http://darkpatterns.org/stamps-com-october-2013/

Don't forget to use MailChimp.

Obviously I do too. That was funny :).

I am not in the states and I can't get most of the services. I wish they would at least do regional podcasting advertising. A startup opportunity :)

Is it weird that I do business with none of those companies BECAUSE of their annoying advertising? I do not want to be advertised by those companies nor be advertised at invasively as they do, and any business I do with them will be rewarding that unwanted behavior.

I munch on bacon, send mail using normal stamps, have my lawyer do my complex legal work for me, do my websites myself in vim, read books the physical paper way, and sleep on a mattress that is of a major brand (and will be probably replaced with either a memory foam or natural latex from one of the smaller manufacturers that aren't Casper), and I wear underwear like Fruit of the Loom or Hanes.

I also know no one that does business with ANY of those companies. I'm pretty sure I'm also not in some sort of minority bubble.

Who exactly is the market for these businesses? Is this some sort of gigantic Dot-Bomb 2.0 and within the next 5 years none of these companies will still or can exist?

Just curious how you would view Dollar Shave Club as "overpaying".

It is mostly a marketing/shipping shell on top of Dorco brand razors, cheaper to buy direct from Dorco.

Granted, "overpay" is somewhat relative and DSC is still better than paying for Gillette or whatever.

I wrote my prelims on these kinds of 'training' paradigms and there is zero credible experimental evidence that ANY of them actually generalize to things like fluid intelligence or g. For an excellent overview on the real state of the science see here [0].

0. http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus...

even though I'm a 'free market' guy, nice to see action being taken against pseudoscience.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doe...

http://greyenlightenment.com/brain-training-doesnt-make-you-...

'Brain training' no better than 'penis enhancement'...just as dubious

Rose-Hulman (my alma mater), should probably revise this:

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/academics/2012/rose-hulman-n...

Building a business on lies and then paying a $2mm fine when caught (without even 100% probability) seems to be an economically rational strategy. Unfortunately.

Improvement of fluid intelligence by training with dual-n-back was studied in Jaeggi et al.[0], but could not be successfully replicated [1]. More in the following article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doe...

[0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/04/25/0801268105.full...

[1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to sell games than neuroscience. Take an assessment, play games based on that assessment, and take the assessment again --- garbage in, garbage out. The value is in identifying congitive deficits so that proper strategies may be put in place that can be practiced in a variety of contexts such that they are actually transferable to everyday life. There's not a heck of a lot of science in the Lumosity baseline either, since all their data comes from an uncontrolled environment on the web. But there are a number of valid, peer reviewed online neurocognitve batteries available without having to go to a psychologist for a few grand.

NIH Toolbox (for researchers) http://www.nihtoolbox.org/Pages/default.aspx

Mindprint Learning (which has the Penn CNB for children) https://mindprintlearning.com/

Brain Resource (which has the Web Neuro for adults) http://www.brainresource.com/mybrainsolutions/personal

One intuitive way to categorize products is according to the observability of the value. In one class, it's readily apparent: the storage is cheaper, it doesn't fail very often, there's little downtime, my payments always go through, the user experience just feels better, all my friends use it. This doesn't have to be objective, just 'noticeable'.

On the other hand, it's hard to judge the value of an encryption app, or a brain training program, because the true value is often hidden. It's difficult to tell, at least for the average consumer whether an encryption app works. There might be signs for the more immediately knowledgeable ('why won't the passwords take special characters, or passwords longer than 12 characters?'), but it's usually a small group.

Unfortunately, this is probably going to make it harder for the latter kind of company to grow quickly, because trust takes time to develop. I don't just need to trust that my data will be safe - the entire value of the product depends on my trust that it does what it says.

I have no idea if lumosity does what it claimed, but I doubt I could easily tell in a day or two. Contrast that with instagram or a better computer - the value (however large or small) is obvious.

On the topic of games and their actual potential impact on cognition and other aspects of life, Jane McGonigal is doing a lot of interesting research, and I highly recommend reading or listening to some of her material if you're interested in the subject. A good starting point is her interview with Tim Ferriss (http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/07/28/jane-mcgonigal/), and from there check out her books if you're interested in going deeper.

I believe it's in that interview that she says that these kinds of "brain training" games are less effective than just normal games built for fun at developing any kind of cognitive ability. I tried Lumosity out for a trial period to see what it was about, but the games were overly simplistic and not well-designed from a fun standpoint. I also felt like I was hitting 90% of their specific "categories" of games with a single game like Starcraft 2, except a game like Starcraft 2 actually forces you to engage the thinking part of your brain if you want to perform at any decent level.

Just going to plug a product I was working on for a while.

Active Memory (From ABC), was working really closely with a team of neuroscientists out of Australia. Lots of their data goes directly into research programs. Here's the blurb from their site:

"Active Memory has been developed in partnership with the University of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. The program is built on a breakthrough statistical model that examines your game results and serves up a customised training schedule that challenges your brain at just the right level of difficulty. Most importantly, the program aims to measure the changes that are happening to your cognition, based on your training. Critically, your participation in Active Memory will contribute to one of the largest studies of its kind into brain training and its potential health benefits."

Was a really great team to work with. Had a very different angle from Luminosity and was held to very strict advertising controls through being a part of ABCs commercial arm.

https://www.activememory.com

The ABC is the Australian Broadcasting Corp, in the same category as the BBC and the CBC

I develop similar product, that focuses on eye training instead of brains. Half of our office is filled with ophthalmologists, with some big names (supposedly — I don't know much about the field). Constant print outs of scientific articles lying around, presentation files stick to the walls (I don't know the proper term, but you know what I mean if you've been into scientific conferences and seminars) and overall vibe really feels like it's a university faculty and not a start-up. Damn, we even have fully equipped ophthalmologist office and get free eye exams when it's not used to measure our beta-testers.

I always assumed that brain training apps are just like that. What "did not have the science" really mean in this case? Did they find some errors in peer-reviewed papers these companies have published? Or they just faked it all?

They are exactly like that, in that almost all purported benefits of eye training and brain training alike are not supported by scientific evidence and only very narrow effects exists: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825744

As I said, I certainly don't know enough to argue about it in scientific terms, so unfortunately, I have to resort to trust to authority. So, for comparison with this single paper from 2005, here are recent papers of our lead researcher (who has a cute habit of going around the office in the evening and collecting the forgotten tea cups into the washing machine) on the matter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Polat+U%5BAuthor%5D

None of this has been around long enough to generate good longitudinal data either way, imo. That said, taking a cognitive assessment across a couple domains, playing a series of games based on those very same cognitive tasks, and then retaking the same cognitive assessment seems pretty suspect. I would think results would be biased, similar to retest effects. At the end of the day, improvement is either transferred to a variety of other contexts beyond gaming or not. I would think that the true test. There would be some value in a diagnostic, something that would identify deficits, and I think Lumosity offers such a thing but I don't believe it has been rigorously validated.

Is the FDA intervention good or bad?

At first glance, it seems like the answer is yes because the FDA action signals that outrageous, unprovable claims do not give offer a competitive advantage. But by making FDA “experts” the sole arbiter of truth, ideas outside the mainstream are harder to pursue. Some people probably really did benefit from the Luminosity, but now it’s much harder to figure out why. Note that the FDA also makes it harder on people like Consumer Reports, Cochrane Reviews, etc. who get fewer donations and customers because much of what they could be doing competes with the FDA’s government-subsidized service.

The worst part of this is that Lumosity probably did a cost-beenfit analysis years back, realizing they would make more money via these deceptive ads than the expected FTC fine.

For those who don't know- Lumosity is killing it. They can easily pay this fine with their enormous profits.

So, televangelist can claim that you need to send a "seed" (money) to get good fortune and get away with it making millions from the most gullible people around, but a brain-training app is penalized for deceptive ads?

Shit doesn't add up.

The brain training craze all started with the nintendo's brain age game for the ds.

While the research underpinning the product has always been weak in it findings, I find their goal post very low.

If we assume that brain games work, why aren't we comparing this to sudoku, Tetris, trivial pursuit or memory? Or simply reading a book, doing homework?

It's not like real life is low on intellectual challenges and if brain training is really transferable, shouldn't solving math problems be transferable too?

Where does that money go?

I really hope the FTC doesn't get it. It's a conflict of interest that permeates local law enforcement all across America.

FTC puts proceeds of settlement into a "consumer restitution" or "consumer redress" fund. Consumers who were affected by the bad actors, can claim their money back via a separate company which administers that fund. After a period of time, once all affected customers have had time to claim their restitution (usually 12-24 months), then any remaining money left in the "redress" or "restitution" fund goes into the FTCs coffers. I can't quickly find stats on what percentage is usually claimed by consumers. But last time I researched this, it was pretty low with something like <10% of affected consumers actually claiming their restitution and 90% going back into FTC budget.

Dual n-back, coffee, LSD. All things people swear make you smarter.

Coffee has proven to make brain work better. But it's only temporary.

LSD...well, I've never tried it, but people swear by it. Not sure if scientists would be allowed to try it on test cases.

anyone who says lsd makes you smarter is already stupid.

To understand the experience of LSD, I recommend "The New Alchemy" by Alan Watts.

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/alchemy.htm

I've done it several times (as well as basically all popular hallucinogens). I know all about the drug, its impacts on the brain, what it's actually like being on it, etc. I've also lived around many drippy hippie types in Santa Cruz, and the new wave of "microdosing is the key to creative coding" types, and their insights are equally bullshit to me.

Ok, but I don't know if anything you just said entails the claim that "Anyone who says LSD makes you smarter is stupid" -- I may be stupid, but I don't think the argument that (a) LSD offers a temporary alternate form of consciousness that (b) can lead to valuable insights and discoveries which (c) improve your overall cognition is a bad one.

Cocaine leads to a temporary alternate form of consciousness that may or may not lead to valuable insights too. So does ecstacy, or ketamine, or modafinil, or coffee, or weed, or the 2c-X family, or whatever RC you want to take, or yoga, or meditation. A temporary change in perception is not an increase in intelligence.

If you know all about the drug as you say, then you should also know that it has different effects for different people. Why do you automatically assume that people claiming to have benefited from LSD are stupid?

Define "benefited". Saying, "I dropped acid and learned about myself," is very different from saying, "I dropped acid and became smarter." If you're in the latter camp, yes, I'm going to assume you're stupid.

First of all, I think you're expecting way too much rigor from non-scientific, colloquial use of words. You already know what people mean when they talk about things in the general sense.

In any case, its not for me to define. If someone tells me they dropped acid and it helped them in solving a problem, or opened their eyes to new ways of solving them, I'd take them at their word. In the context of altered mental states being beneficial, its not completely absurd to suggest so. This is justified in a day-to-day practical sense, much like if someone told me a restaurant was good, I would not conduct a scientific inquiry around the topic.

I think you're ignoring the context in which I originally replied in this thread.

"Dual n-back, coffee, LSD. All things people swear make you smarter."

It's not up for debate that people find a benefit from LSD. Or any drug. It's literally the reason that people do drugs in the first place. The question is whether or not they make you more intelligent. Able to process information more quickly and accurately. And to that my answer is a resounding no.

And call me crazy, but yes, I do think you should approach an extremely powerful hallucinogen whose dose is measured in micrograms with some rigor and discipline. The potential harm to someone's mental state is a serious risk of LSD that people tend to under appreciate until they've seen it happen to someone.

Okay, fair enough. However, I'd like to point out that there is no objective metric for intelligence. Do you consider musical ability as intelligence? Several musicians have claimed to become 'more intelligent' with drugs.

Also, my use of the word rigor was about the discussion, not the consumption of LSD. I don't want to comment one way or the other on whether one should consume drugs.

I agree. "Coding" requires concentration, attention to consistency and detail, organization, and sitting in one place for many hours.

None of those things are anything like what I'd describe experience of LSD, even at very low doses, is like. Rather, I'd say the opposite.

When I was a kid I'd open my VIC-20 and deliberately "circuit bend" it; make connections across the data or address bus that would cause garble to show on the screen, etc. I think of many hallucinogens of acting in the same category; they have an effect, a very interesting effect, and alter the experience of the world. But not in any kind of systematic organized fashion.

The chief insight from taking something like LSD is that perception is plastic. Which most of us know already. After you learn that lesson there's not much more to learn and it becomes a purely aesthetic, and quite uncomfortable, experience.

Look for CIA's MK-Ultra, here: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2012/09/mk-ultraviolence/ And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

Maybe wiser, not smarter.

Where is the scientist? The grad school dropout with one peer reviewed publication?

http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team

I did not read the article yet but what immediately comes to mind are those "try this one weird trick" ads

I used a weird trick to pay off my mortgage

I always wondered how the "brain improvements" from this thing compared to just playing a video game

I was subscribed to Lumosity for 2 years.

Did you use it?

Quite a lot. Religiously followed the schedule. Felt good for doing it. Can't say it helped or not.

How does Cogmed compare to Lumosity?

Only 2M...?

Did the USDA ever get fined for the Food Pyramid being completely wrong and then being thrown out[1]? Justice, justice?

[1] http://www.pjstar.com/article/20151230/OPINION/151239951

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