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weasel words and phrases

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It must be said that most of us use weasel words and phrases to cover ourselves when writing letters and reports. The advertising industry uses them all the time. I am a scientist and sometimes I use them! You will even find weasel words used by me on this web site when explaining inconclusive points. However, deceiving web sites for alopecia products often use more than their fair share of weasel words. There are many weasel words to watch out for; may, possible, could, might, should, potential, many, if, etc. and these are incorporated into phrases that have a familiar ring from web site to web site. Below are a few examples, you will find many more on quack web sites.

Our product will work for you IF you follow our instructions

IF the product fails to promote hair regrowth for you the product sellers can claim you failed to follow their instructions and so it is your fault that there was no hair regrowth.

We have MANY satisfied customers

How MANY customers exactly? 1, 3, 10? You do not know. A more interesting question that you need to ask is what percentage of users FAIL to have any response to the hair growth product.

Our product CAN promote hair regrowth

It CAN promote hair regrowth that does not mean that it WILL promote YOUR hair growth

MOST of our customers have 25% hair regrowth or more!

In the eyes of the product seller, how many is MOST exactly? The word MOST provides no specific value that would stand in a court of law. When the product fails to do anything for you the response from the product seller will be that unfortunately you are one of the minority for which their product does not work.

Percentage values can be rather weasely and can hide many sins. 25% of 100,000 (the average number of hairs on a scalp unaffected by alopecia) is 25,000. regrowth of that many hairs would indeed be a very good response. But maybe how much 25% really equates to depends on what baseline has been used to make the calculation. Maybe the scam artist is refering to just a small area that the "evaluated". 25% of 100 is 25 - 25 new hairs would not be such a good result.