A correspondent reminds me of the absurd claims of shampoo and other hair care products. The expression that really got her goat was "nano-keratin" - as if keratin molecules could somehow be shrunk into a smaller size. The word "nano" relates to measurements of the order of 10-9m. So anything about the size of a molecule is by definition "nano". And it did cause me to reflect that the one area of advertising where no logical control of claims ever seems to be made, is in the manufacture of shampoo.
As a young pro-factor Archdruid, as the advertisers would probably put it, I remember the old VO5 adverts on Radio Luxembourg - "New apple V05 brings your hair alive and leaves it shiny, shiny, shiny as an apple". And that memory drove our early ventures in our "Natural Beaker Range" of shampoos in the Beaker Bazaar. There was Beaker Natural Russet for Brunettes, Henna & Somerset Redstreak for Redheads, and Golden Delicious for Blondes (or Blonds - we make shampoos for all genders and none). I remember there was a complaint from one woman after we turned her hair bright yellow - what did she expect, using Golden Delicious, for goodness sake? But other than that the shampoo was, as we promised, completely natural (and completely useless - how could apple juice do anything other than strip the covering from hair, it being mildly acidic?)
From there we went on to the Beaker Essentials range - basically, that was just boiled up fat and ashes - "Just as the Neolithic People would wash their hair". And we mixed that up with water from the Holy River Lea. Though we still put it in three different bottles - for "Bronze-Age Blondes", "Barrow-building Brunettes" and "Invading red-headed Celtic home-destroyers". Although that third range didn't sell so well.
But we thought we were onto a winner with our mixture of mock-scientific and rubbish spiritual claims for our shampoos. So our new "Astral Wave" and "Prehistoric Ecstatics" ranges promised that you could get a genuinely spiritual experience from the use of our products. And then we brought out the "Quantum effects" shampoo. A massive seller - we had a flood of feedback from people telling us they could actually feel those electrons, tunnelling into their follicles. Although they didn't like the way that you couldn't tell what colour you were going to come out, until you had a look and the wave function collapsed.
We thought we were pushing it with our most recent shampoo - "Hyper-strings - takes your hair into the 18th dimension". And it turned out we were. Not with the scientific claim - people were quite happy to accept we were using a totally unproven quantum theory to make their hair clean. No. It was the word "strings" that upset them. Made them think that their hair might end up all lank and stringy.
Anyway, we've got the latest batch of ash, fat and perfume boiling away down in Young Keith's Lab. We're going to call it "Molecular Rapture - with micro-cleansers". Should be a massive top-seller.
The proper science bit
The important bits of shampoo - the bits that really exist - can be read on the back. On the whole, if you've water (or "aqua"), sodium laureth sulfate (which should be sulphate, but that's international rules for you) and salt - your hair will be clean. If you add in some perfume (chamomile is nice) then your hair will smell good as well.
Isn't it funny that there are international rules to control the spelling of the chemicals in shampoo, but nothing to stop you pretending it will rejuvenate your love life at the micro-level?
My hair suffers from quantum uncertainty..
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