A whiff of scientism wafted around one of the meeting rooms at the Royal
Society of Medicine in London last month. Anyone with a nose for this sort of
thing became aware of it soon after the morning coffee break. The conference was
on the biology and aesthetics of ageing skin.
A senior scientist from Procter & Gamble, the American firm best known
for its washing powders and toiletries, was describing how he and his fellow
skin researchers are doing their best to retard, if not reverse, the ravages of
time. He offered insights into the skin鈥檚 elasticity and water content, and even
its optical properties. Apparently skin looks like skin and not plastic because
of the way its outer layers scatter reflected light. Fascinating. But the longer
he went on, the more puzzled I became. What was all this science for?
Consider this: the skin becomes less elastic as you age. Any new product
which could significantly slow this process would be a winner. The P&G chaps
have devised an ingenious instrument that measures elasticity by recording the
deformation of skin in response to very slight pressure. But have they never
tried the old pinch-and-release test? Pull up the skin on the back of the hands
of a teenager and an 80-year-old and see the difference. The P&G man鈥檚
meeting abstract says he is in the business of developing products that
鈥渘oticeably鈥� (he put that in bold italics) improve the skin. If that鈥檚 his
intention, why not stick to pinching and releasing?
Advertisement
Scientism is an excessive belief in the power of science, and the application
of scientific method to issues on which it has no real bearing. In cosmetics
there鈥檚 a lot of it about.
Another example from P&G. One of the firm鈥檚 newer techniques allows its
researchers to record detailed images of a patch of skin, digitise the data, and
then quantify its wrinkles: their number, length, depth and so on. The aim, of
course, is to provide an objective measure of wrinkling. And if you鈥檙e testing a
new unguent for smoothing a rugged epidermis, I鈥檓 sure the technique will show
the tiniest improvement. But this is not quite the point if the aim is to
produce a noticeable difference. Even your most malicious friends don鈥檛 inspect
your face with a hand lens before passing barbed remarks about crow鈥檚-feet. As
with the elasticity measurements, questions are being answered with the aid of
technology when the only answers that count can be seen with the human eye.
And then there鈥檚 water. As all those tubes and jars on the pharmacy shelves
testify, we want our skin to be smooth and moisturised, not rough and dry. Using
microscope sections of the epidermis, the man from P&G can demonstrate the
water gradient in skin鈥檚 outermost 100 micrometres. There is less water,
especially near the surface, in people with 鈥渄ry skin鈥濃�攚ho are so
classified because, well, their skin looks dry. And following the use of a
moisturising cream, you can show that the skin has taken on more water, and it
is more evenly distributed.
Alas, anyone seeking a better moisturiser has to confront the law of
diminishing returns. Even the most basic cream does a fair job, so to measure
improvements you need technology. But if the effects only become apparent with
clever technology, are they worth having?
The pharmaceuticals industry knows all about this. It doesn鈥檛 take a
controlled trial to show that penicillin saves lives, but it may take several
thousand patients to prove that a new antihypertensive lowers blood pressure by
just a few per cent. However, marginal improvements in drug therapy matter. A
fall in the average blood pressure of a whole population will reduce the number
of heart attacks, even though the difference in any one individual may be small.
You can measure the health of populations, because small individual differences
add up. But unless we are going to develop a new epidemiology of beauty (wrinkle
rates per 10 000 women, maybe, or community skin dryness scores) the benefits of
much cosmetic research will remain elusive.
I am not suggesting that the cosmetics manufacturers have no need of
scientists or, as some would argue, that any application of science to this
business is inherently trivial. Cosmetics are industrial products and, like any
other, need to be tested, not least for safety. What I doubt is the value of
some of the more fanciful research. The benefits of the only product generally
agreed to minimise wrinkles, retinoic acid, were discovered through its original
use against acne. The chances of cosmetic science making any noticeable
difference are remote. Most skin ageing is caused by the action of sunlight.
This is best prevented by covering up.
Another of the speakers at the meeting, the health and beauty editor of
Vogue, aptly described the industry鈥檚 array of rejuvenating lotions and
potions as 鈥渉ope in a jar鈥�. She鈥檚 right鈥攅vidence barely comes into it.
Image, belief, wishful thinking, price, peer pressure, insecurity and marketing
are what matter. Science is just another ingredient in this mixture: a chemical
formula, an impressive reaction, or a big curly molecule to give a new twist to
the adverts.
We are all keen for science to serve industry. But 鈥淪cientism serving
industry鈥� is not a slogan to take to the barricades.