Ben Carlson - Don't Fall For It

Fear and greed lend a hand in every financial mishap, and Brinkley’s tale is no different. The man himself was driven by greed and an inner desire to prove his critics wrong. It’s estimated Brinkley was bringing in more than $1 million a year during the Great Depression. This was an astronomical sum back then but even more outlandish when you consider average wages across the country were dropping like a rock, falling around 40% in 1932 alone. [27]To satiate his greed, Brinkley preyed on the fears of other (mostly) men who were ashamed of their lack of sexual prowess, the sick and injured who were in search of a miracle, and the uneducated who didn’t know any better and simply trusted someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Even his wife Minnie was under his spell until the very end. She outlived her husband by nearly 40 years and claimed until her dying day that successful goat gland procedures were still being performed in secret all around the world. [28]

It’s easy to look back now at how gullible people in the early twentieth century were when it came to the charms of quacks and snake oil salesmen. That is until you realize those same techniques still work today. Just think of all the scams available for those looking to lose weight, improve their finances, and hold on to their youth. The AMA spent years trying to discredit Brinkley, but he had the power of persuasion, a medium of communication to the masses, and a sales technique that would have allowed him to sell water to a whale.

Healthcare has improved by leaps and bounds since Brinkley began his reign of terror on the Midwest, but that doesn’t mean there will always be a unique procedure to solve all your ills. The same is true in all facets of life. The world is a complicated, dynamic place that doesn’t always lend itself to easy solutions. There’s no recipe for creating a hit movie. Scouts still don’t know what makes one quarterback better than another when selecting a top pick in the NFL draft. There’s no secret formula to earn vast riches overnight in the stock market. And there’s no blueprint entrepreneurs can follow to create the next Apple or Google.

There’s a New Yorker cartoon that shows a billboard planted in a field of sheep with a picture of a wolf that reads, “I am going to eat you.” One of the sheep says to another sheep, “He tells it like it is.” Brinkley was the wolf in this analogy while his patients were the sheep. At Brinkley’s funeral in 1942, an anonymous man in the crowd supposedly confessed, “I knowed [sic] he was bilking me, but…I liked him anyway.” [29]

Miracles may in fact exist, but don’t expect someone to sell them to you.

1 1 Tozzi J and Hopkins JS. The little blue pill: an oral history of Viagra. Bloomberg [Internet]. 2017 Dec 11. Available from: https://www .bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-11/the-little-blue-pill-an-oral-history-of-viagra

2 2 Ibid.

3 3 Foley KE. Out of the blue pill: Viagra’s famously surprising origin story is actually a pretty common way to find new drugs. Quartz [Internet]. 2017 Sept 10. Available from: https://qz.com/1070732/viagras-famously-surprising-origin-story-is-actually-a-pretty-common-way-to-find-new-drugs/

4 4 Tozzi J and Hopkins JS. The little blue pill: an oral history of Viagra. Bloomberg [Internet]. 2017 Dec 11. Available from: https://www .bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-11/the-little-blue-pill-an-oral-history-of-viagra

5 5 Rudd J. From Viagra to Valium, the drugs that were discovered by accident. The Guardian [Internet]. 2017 Jul 11. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/11/from-viagra-to-valium-the-drugs-that-were-discovered-by-accident

6 6 Pinsker J. Why we live 40 years longer today than we did in 1880. The Atlantic [Internet]. 2013 Nov. Available from: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/die-another-day/309541/

7 7 Foley KE. Out of the blue pill: Viagra’s famously surprising origin story is actually a pretty common way to find new drugs. Quartz [Internet]. 2017 Sept 10. Available from: https://qz.com/1070732/viagras- famously-surprising-origin-story-is-actually-a-pretty-common-way-to-find-new-drugs/

8 8 Naish J. Is Viagra a cure or a curse? As Britain is the first country to make it available over the counter, John Naish on the wonder sex drug. Daily Mail [Internet]. 2017 Dec 1. Available from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5134761/A-cure-curse-JOHN-NAISH-wonder-sex-drug.html

9 9 Adams SH. The Great American Fraud. OTB ebook Publishing; 2016.

10 10 Brock P. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2008.

11 11 Lane P. Nuts! [film]. 2016.

12 12 Brock P. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2008.

13 13 Lane P. Nuts! [film]. 2016.

14 14 Gordon RJ. The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War. The Princeton Economic History of the Western World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press; 2016.

15 15 Brock P. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2008.

16 16 Wu T. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; 2016.

17 17 Lane P. Nuts! [film]. 2016

18 18 Brock P. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2008.

19 19 Alexander S. Powerless placebos. Slate Star Codex [Internet]. 2018 Jan 31. Available from: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/31/powerless-placebos/?platform=hootsuite

20 20 Brock P. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2008.

21 21 The case of Brinkley vs. Fishbein: proceedings of a libel suit based on an article published in Hygeia. Jama Network [Internet] 1939 May 13; 112(19):1952–68. Available from: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/288277

22 22 Vigen T. Spurious correlations. [Internet]. Available from: http://www .tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

23 23 Washington L. What’s the stock market got to do with the production of butter in Bangladesh? CNN Money [Internet]. 1998 Mar 1. Available from: https://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_ archive/1998/03/01/238606/index.htm

24 24 Kindley E. Nuts!: a questionable cure for impotence. The New Republic [Internet]. 2016 Jul 22. Available from: https://newrepublic.com/ article/135422/nuts-questionable-cure-impotence

25 25 Brock P. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2008.

26 26 Lane P. Nuts! [film]. 2016

27 27 Allen F. Since yesterday: The 1930s in America. New York: Open Road Media; 1931.

28 28 Brock P. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2008.

29 29 Ibid.

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them .

—Charles Cotton

The Eiffel Tower is one of the most recognizable and well-trafficked monuments in the world. Each year, it’s estimated well over six million visitors wait in long lines to experience this gorgeous landmark. It may be hard to believe, but when it was built the tower was subject to ridicule and was only supposed to stand for 20 years before being disassembled.