Gazelle

Having recently upgraded my phone, I decided to see what I could get for trading in my old one. After listening to about 500 commercials for Gazelle.com on This Week in Tech, I was excited to see what fortune I could collect for my Samsung Galaxy S3. The phone is less than 2 years old, a popular model, and still in great condition.

So I went to Gazelle and punched in my information. Looks like the yacht is going to have to wait, based on the following quote that I received:

Five dollars!
For "Flawless" condition.

That's not even remotely worth the effort it would take to wipe the phone, package it up, and ship it. I'm better off keeping it and using it as a mini Wi-fi tablet.

Since they clearly only give decent money for new phones in great condition, the logical conclusion is that they probably make most of their money by being a clearinghouse for stolen phones.

WebMD and Quack Treatments

WebMD is a website that many of my friends and family seem to trust as a source of health information. But I have recently found that they commit critical sins of omission when it comes to alternative treatments.

The first issue I noted was when I looked up acupuncture on the site. They talk about what acupuncture is, and whether it is safe (answer: yes). But they need to go a step further in my opinion. They need to talk about whether acupuncture actually works. At a minimum, they should say that the literature of good studies on acupuncture show that it does very little, at best. An even stronger statement would be to say that it essentially does nothing beyond vague placebo effects that are from giving a patient special attention. But WebMD don't say any of that. The site does not seem to take a position on whether any treatment actually works.

So I thought I would take my investigation a step further by looking at a treatment that there is no debate about - one which every legitimate professional agrees doesn't work and couldn't possibly work: Homeopathy. Even in their article about Homeopathy, WebMD does not take a stand regarding the fact that it doesn't work. This is a disservice to their customers, who may not have the experience to figure out these conclusions on their own. I suggest that they should add a section to each page called "Effectiveness".

I realize that WebMD may be trying to stay above the fray, and just provide basic information to their readers. However, they are implicitly "endorsing" these types of treatment by not mentioning that they don't work.