Topic: French Mythbusters features hair-reader as "scientific expert"

[marcparis]

France has a lame version of Mythbusters called "On n'est pas que des cobayes" (We're not just guinea pigs), broadcast on educational public TV network France 5.

You can watch it (in French) for a few more days here: http://www.pluzz.fr/on-n-est-pas-que-des-cobayes-2012-02-17-20h35.html

Hélène Clauderer, an "expert" from a company called the Centre Clauderer, is brought in with her microscope to tell us which of the three hosts has the strongest hair. She also explains that you can tell the personality of people by the structure of their hair.

She's asked: "Is is true that with a person's hair you can tell their characteristics?"
She answers: "Yes, but first I have to show how the microscope works."

She examines the hair of the first host and says: "We see you have an excellent diet. We can also see that you're very emotional. You speak your mind, and quickly."
The host asks: "How can you see that?"
Reply: "In the structure of the hair. That's it."

About the next host: "Vincent has a hair that would be great for pulling a car. You are very determined. When you decide to do something, you really do it."

The last host is healthy but "is very stressed".

ARRGGGGGH.

[Chew]

And all that nonsense went unchallenged? No blinded testing or anything?

France is really big on graphology, isn't it?

[Obsequious]

Those things she said after reading their hair were about as specific as fortune cookies and horoscopes.

[Jeremy's Sea]

My hair would indicate I have below average personal hygiene... 

[marcparis]

And all that nonsense went unchallenged? No blinded testing or anything?

It was extremely odd. The idea was that they were going to show that yes, a person could pull a car with their hair. And a not illogical starting point would be to analyze hair. Instead of doing that in any real way, they just found an "expert" who would look through a microscope at the hosts' hair. (That's typical of the program: it's a very weak version of Mythbusters, and it's full of approximations and half-assedry).

So they found a hair "expert" (in fact, a business specialized in "hair restoration"). And she did sort of talk about the structure of the hair as seen under the microscope. But she was really pushing her personality interpretation gimmick. When half-heartedly questioned about how one could see anything about personality through a person's hair, she said just "it's in the the structure. Voilà." (A better translation would probably have been: "it just is", or "don't you see?")

It's as if they had the question of the day be "can you look at the sun during an eclipse?" and have on a guy with a telescope who starts going on about astrology.
[/quote]

France is really big on graphology, isn't it?

Yes, but it's rather out of fashion. Astrology remains strong. I'd say that astrology, homeopathy, and EMS are the biggest woo here. I'd never heard of capillography (if that's what it's called).