[Insert Boswelox pun here]
We've been wanting to write about Boswelox for ages. Why? We were curious why a compound that L'Oreal wanted to convince us really was anti-aging was named to sound like they were making the whole thing up. The idea that one of their researchers said to the marketing department "We've named it Boswelox because of it's anti-aging properties" and they went along with it made us giggle.

Turns out the most likely reason is that it's anti-wrinkle claims are a load of er...Boswelox. Says the ASA here (pdf, 104kb). It's the usual suspects - using pseudoscience to imply it actually works, extrapolating stuff in a petri dish to real people, that kind of thing.

We particularly like:

"[...]the BACC approved the claim 'counteract skin micro contractions' as long as it appeared with the line ‘scientifically tested on isolated skin cells.’

The clarification appeared in on-screen text while at the same time the visuals focused on Claudia Schiffer pulling a variety of facial expressions. The impression that the product worked on the expression lines on a human face appeared, therefore, to take precedence over the clarification that the text was designed to give."

How about cigarette warning style large font for those kinds of things?