Bad Science in Beauty Product Advertising

Advertisers selling snake oils are dab hands at sciencey sounding tosh. What do the following mean?

Pentapeptides - No idea

Boswellox - too easy to remove the 'swe' bit

Aqua - A common ingredient because when a product is 96% 'water' it is harder to sell for thousands of dollars a kilo

"reduces the appearance of" note the word 'appearance'. Doesn't actually reduce anything, just covers what is really there with paint or water.

pro-retinol -something to do with the eyes?

85% agree. (usually appears next to tiny letters admitting the 85% were asked in a very limited not scientifically evaluated consumer survey).

active liposomes - better than inactive one of course!