When a marketing teams use celebrities to endorse their product, use gimmicks  or subliminal messages to try to influence opinion by showing people in lab coats or doctors offices with fake diplomas on the wall.

The picture below shows that Khloe Kardashian endorses a diet program called Flat Tummy© that sell teas, milkshakes, smoothie mixes and lollies to help people lose excess weight and burn belly fat.

Khloe Kardashian appeals to this present generation of young women as the object of perfection that they must strive to emulate. The diet products and the pictures in the advertisements are based on a cultural ideology that women should be skinny and flawless and that they can accomplish the same look just by drinking these shakes or using specialty teas. People should realize that money is strictly behind this endorsement, not her concern for your wellbeing. Khloe has no formal education in nutrition or medical sciences. Worth noting is that these products are not FDA approved, which means they have not been tested for validity.  

In 2006, Oprah Winfrey endorsed a book called The Secret. The self help book is based on the idea of the law of attraction - that your thoughts can change your life. If you ask, and believe, you will receive. 

The Oprah Winfrey show had the author and guest speakers come on to talk about their experiences with the program. The impression left was if you follow this book, you too can get out of debt, find a new job, lose weight or find everlasting love. However, this theory isn’t realistic and is based on the simplicity theory; its a game of numbers and probabiltities, not ancient wisdom and positive energy. The Secret is based off of positive outcomes. The speakers on Oprahs stage only mention the positive experiences; the mundane or any negative outcomes are never mentioned. When two or more positive experiences occur to a person reading this book, they chalk it up to The Secret working instead of simplicity. 

The reality is that life is a series of moments. Some of us will succeed and some of us will fail and will have nothing to do with whether we read a book or not; life isn’t fair and it isn’t based on The Secret.

According to the Mayan Calendar, the planets were to come into alignment and it would cause Earth to destroy itself in the end of 2012. The Mayans created a fairly accurate calendar based on their knowledge of astrology and mathematics.  This calendar predicted the end of the Earth in Dec 2012 and many believers thought it to be true.

This prediction should have been met with skepticism. The chances of the planet Earth destroying itself on a known specific day and year, was just not likely. The chances that a primitive civilization would be able to predict the end of the world is based on nothing more than ancient astrological beliefs and primitive mathematical equations. While the calendar was fairly accurate pertaining to time periods (a day, a month, a year) it also had a few flaws and miscalculations. The Mayan people did not take into consideration the time the Earth had already existed before the invention of the calendar. As well, mans understanding of astrology and math equations were primitive at that time. We now have a far better understanding of the planets, our solar system and our math equations have got to be more advanced than their civilization.  

Lie detector test machines are based around confirmation bias. Most people believe they tell the absolute truth and that these machines are infallible. The police believe in them so much that they use them regularly as an investigative tool. However, these tests can be beaten, they do not always detect when a person is definitively lying and they are only about 87% correct, leaving a 13% margin of error. (Ph.D, 2020) The theory behind the machine is that the body will experience a different physical response if they are lying due to a guilty emotional response. However, not all humans feel guilt or have a conscience. Perception is in the eye of the beholder and guilt or innocence are just concepts to some. Narcissists and Sociopaths exist among regular people and are more than capable of passing a lie detector tests and getting away with being guilty while authorities dismiss due to passing the infallible test.  

The brain uses patterns as an evolutionary tool. Our brain turns objects into things we would recognize and tries to make sense out of the patterns that emerge; this is why we look at clouds and recognize shapes among them.  
The picture below looks like angels are praying for us. This is the brain recognizing the shape of an "Angel" in the clouds, which for Christians, correlates with Heaven and God, or to some may believe its a sign from their loved ones.
 

When a person plays the same numbers for 20 years straight, the chances of finally winning with those numbers increases with each play. A person will say its God will or they had a dream with these numbers and have been playing them ever since. However, this is not divine intervention, this is actually based on Simplicity. The numbers of tickets sold and the randomness of drawn numbers just happen to match up with a winner, who has a cool story to tell.

Brainspotting is a new age psychotherapy treatment that is taking advantage of people by charging large sums of money to try an unproven and unsupported therapeutic approach. It is sold as a new way of healing traumatic brain injuries (TBI), concussions, other traumatic experiences, assists with difficult emotions, psychological struggles and physical pain. In reality, it does absolutely nothing.

It is not covered by any medical plan and is expensive ($250 per 90 min session. Multiple sessions required). Training to perform this special treatment is available to anyone interested, you do not need any special skills,  previous experience or have any medical knowledge beforehand. You just have to have a credit card and be willing to pay the course cost.

In all of the articles I read, medical jargon was used a lot. The training sessions being offered sounded important and  official, as well as confusing. The description of brainspotting states that this treatment is based around a legitimate therapy practice, EMDR, therefore giving it a boost of legitimacy it did not earn. EMDR therapy is a legitimate treatment option available to address some of the issues brainspotting claims to heal; people associate the proven achievements of one therapy with the unproven benefits of the other. This therapy plays on peoples emotions, as people who are suffering want relief; families believe this touch therapy will help heal their loved one, and will pay the cost. In reality, the therapist performing this treatment doesn’t have any real medical training or degrees and can not provide evidence based proof that this particular therapy works.
An underlying theme is money. Selling expensive therapeutic services, accompanying books and offering classes to teach this skill to others, for a cost. This treatment hasn’t been scientifically proven to work; however, what it does do is offer a solution to hurt people who are just looking for relief. That connection is enough for some people to not question beyond that.
While brainspotting sounds like an interesting therapy option, I don’t believe it is a true medical tool that should be used in the future. Since it is not an evidence based science , the benefits can’t be proved one way or the other. Money is also a strong motivator of this pseudoscience. It also could potentially fall into the category of having faith and belief based on nothing more than a gut feeling. When people were writing testimonies about their brainspotting experiences, they would mention a feeling of relief or weight being lifted off their shoulders, being tired after a session or feeling emotional afterwards. This all makes complete sense if you consider what they may have been discussing or think about in their private therapy sessions. This is a normal response to releasing built up anxiety and revisiting past traumatic memories, not a definitive sign that this therapy works. Since it continues to remain not an evidence based science at this time, in my conclusion, it is most likely a pseudoscience belief instead of real science.