Know they don't work is not the same as don't care if they actually work or not, or work as well or better then a cheaper alternative.
Funny! Wrong, but funny!
It's not the same, I agree. My point was that they must know by now in any case. I'm not saying, they would not want to put out anything that works (which is probably still true for some of them), I'm saying, there isn't anything. I'm only talking for bodybuilding purpose, though.
I'm unclear what I was looking at. Anything a single person does to track an effect on their own may be interesting for that person, but it's an n =1 subjective observation and a long way from objective data. Think true double blind placebo studies with large enough n numbers to be worth a damn and well run. Plenty of "double blind placebo" studies are not worth the paper they are printed on, much less the other junk that passes for "research" out there...
You asked for my definition of effectiveness (=
enhancement factor in my article) in terms of bodybuilding. This is described in P1 of my article and the formulas above (and has nothing to do with how many people are involved in a certain study, for more people -> average, see P2):
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Bulk: gaining body weight at a certain rate [W = pounds gained / week] with a certain ratio of muscle vs. fat [R = pounds muscle / pounds fat] gained at the end of the bulk.
Cut: losing body weight at a certain rate [W = pounds lost / week] with a certain ratio of fat vs. muscle [R = pounds fat / pounds muscle] lost at the end of the cut.
...
The person could e.g. perform a cut with a certain supplement and write down R1, then a bulk and then the exact same cut but without the supplement and write down R2. The
enhancement factor of the method can be calculated as E = (R1 - R2) / R2. If e.g. R1 = 5 (meaning that for 5lbs of fat loss, 1lb of muscle was lost) and R2 = 4, E would be 25%.
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If interested in some of the inside dirt on the supp industry and such, I do go into a some detail on that in a recent interview. A snippet:
"I get called into a meeting with the owner of the company and he shows me what they are working on. He asks what I think about it, so I tell him the truth, which is, the research does not support the claims they plan on making about this product and it’s generally worthless. The owner gets a “gee, this guy is really naive” look on his face and says to me:
“Will, what we do is throw sh&% against the wall and see what sticks. We can worry about the rest later.”
Cont:
http://www.brinkzone.com/articledetails.php?aid=135&acatid=3
I can believe that that's how it starts. But as soon as a product catches on, they would be stupid to not at least test for potential dangers.