Advertising Standards Authority adjudications, sanctions and UK Passport Net

This morning on Radio 4's Moneybox I heard about a website (uk-passport.net) which comes up prominently when people search for anything to do with getting or renewing a UK passport.

The site helps people fill in a passport form and charges them around £40 for doing so, however this money doesn't go towards the cost of getting a passport. In short it's much cheaper just to go to the Post Office or be more careful when searching online and make sure you use the official GOV.UK website.

While the service isn't illegal or anything like that, after all it's perfectly OK to pay someone to help you with something such as getting an accountant to help you manage your finances, the issue with this website - and which led to 14 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) resulting in an adjudication - is that it implied that it was official and people believed it.

The programme spoke to consumers who'd fallen foul of the website and who handed over money that they needn't have, it also spoke to the communications director at the ASA who outlined what could be done to prevent other consumers from being misled.

Skeptic bloggers often blog about the websites or other marketing materials of organisations that have made claims that may be misleading. Part of the reason for this is that it provides an alternative view that (hopefully) people searching for relevant keywords will come across. The intention is to mildly alter the Google landscape a little bit.

The ASA spokesperson was challenged that there didn't seem to be that much that they could do that would actually solve the problem. The ASA does have quite a few options, but it can be a drawn-out process.

They said that they'd asked UK Passport Net to remove the term 'official' and at time of recording this hadn't been done (I checked, it's still there) despite the sanction being published two months ago (see link above). There are a number of companies that dig their heels and in and don't respond to the ASA's requests, to the point that the ASA has a special page of "non-compliant online advertisers" which lists the repeat offenders. People involved in the alternative therapy world are often reluctant to co-operate with the ASA, or Trading Standards, and some have even tried to band together to fight this - arguing that the ASA has no particular mandate to tell them what they can and can't say.

Here's what steps the ASA can and does take - firstly, work with the advertiser to try and resolve the matter. If that doesn't work they can add the advertiser to the non-compliant list. This seems to show up prominently in Google search results (or perhaps it's just on mine). If there's still no joy then they can do several of the following (a) take out an advert themselves flagging up the misbehaviour (b) work with search engines to remove paid-for adverts (c) report the company to Trading Standards.

See more at Online Sanctions.

All of these take time and effort - at the time of writing Google still hasn't removed UK Passport Net's listing but it may well do so soon. If the company removes 'official' from their ad then it can remain.

In the meantime, blogging about stuff in the hope that it might show up in Google's search results is perhaps a decent strategy.

Also, here's the official GOV.UK site to access passport information
https://www.gov.uk/browse/abroad


See also 
These websites discuss concerning behaviour from a cancer clinic in Texas which has recently had its inspection reports published, it really doesn't look very good. So far there appear to have been no legal sanctions but through the blogging efforts of doctors, scientists and skeptics anyone searching for information about the clinic now will most definitely find pages that are critical of the clinic's activities.

FDA Releases Burzynski Clinic Inspection Notes
"The information and its implications, should they hold up, are absolutely damning for the Burzynski Clinic and especially for the lead researcher, Stanislaw Burzynski. Those of us who have been researching this topic have known about these findings for a long time, from almost the moment it could be requested through a Freedom of Information Act request (6 months before it appeared on the FDA website), but we have been careful to not release it through blogs. We wanted to see that it got as high profile a release as possible. Of course, the cat is out of the bag in a big way, and so I want to let you know what these documents say."

Writing About Houston Cancer Quack Dr. Burzynski’s Antineoplastons
"Skeptics can do many things to naturally boost the Google ranking of good information so that it arrives in the hands of people who need it, patients and their families."

Ought we to be writing to the local newspapers that wrote about #Burzynski fundraising efforts

There is recent news on the Burzynski Cancer Clinic based in Texas and it is not good.

Yesterday saw the publication of two documents from the FDA (the US Food & Drug Administration) which reported on an audit of the clinic. They noted that the clinic failed to take proper medical care of the patients and failed to keep appropriate medical records. This is serious because of the harm that can be done to patients when they are taken an unproven cancer treatment but is also worrying from the point of view of 'governance' (ie are the people running the show behaving in a competent way).

"Reports published by the FDA show unrecorded adverse events, failure to obtain proper informed consent, failure to disclose additional costs and systematic destruction of the very patient records that might establish whether the treatment works or not."
Source: WWDDTYDTY blog - Breaking: Burzynski inspection reports

Some of the larger newspapers have written about the clinic, some have reported on fundraising attempts and some have written about the controversial treatment at this clinic. As far as I'm aware a reasonable number of local newspapers have also written stories about families who are trying to raise funds to send family members with inoperable brain tumours to the clinic. My impression (and it might be wrong) is that local newspapers have written more favourably about the clinic.

Generally when doctors, scientists, skeptic bloggers or anyone else has been critical of the clinic's unconventional methods⁽¹⁾ - often in the comments section of favourable newspaper articles - people who've undergone treatment or are thinking of doing so feel threatened. That's understandable, though there can be no criticism of anyone who wants to try everything to save their life or that of someone else, only of the clinic itself.

I wonder if there's a list of all the local newspapers that have reported uncritically about the clinic and if we might write to them with this new information that makes it clear why the clinic's activities are a cause for concern.

The treatment is delivered in liquid form which includes a great deal of salt, raising the level of sodium in the blood (hypernatraemia). This can be fatal though is treatable, however it appears from the information in the FDA's records that there was a failure to treat this effectively, which is harmful.

"You failed to monitor as required by Section 1 6 of your Monitoring Plan. The investigator did not report adverse events (AEs) experienced by study subjects, including 18 cases of hypernatremia."
Source: FDA reports, cited in: WWDDTYDTY blog - Breaking: Burzynski inspection reports

Thanks to @harpistkat and @dianthusmed for comments on Twitter too.

For an uncritical report on Burzynski's methods and other people playing at helping people with cancer you might enjoy this article from the comedy health magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' which Google has cached here: The new soldiers of the cancer war

Sadly that magazine has not exactly covered itself in glory where Burzynski is concerned and has reported his activities uncritically in other articles too. This is an example of the poor information in the magazines that have led both Waitrose and Sainsbury's to stop stocking this title (and to go on record stating that fact) in their stores in the UK, however you can still take out a subscription to the magazine on their website.

Notes
⁽¹⁾ For one, charging patients large sums to participate in what the clinic calls 'clinical trials' (but didn't seem to keep records for) is a fairly unusual situation. In some cases trial participants may actually receive a (usually small) payment for expenses and inconvenience.

Burzynski Clinic tweets #burzynski