Microbiome Digest – Bik's Picks

A daily digest of scientific microbiome papers, by the MD team. Founded by Elisabeth Bik, microbiome and science integrity consultant. Twitter: @microbiomdigest

Pillow talk – a misleading ad for the SleepGram pillow

Posted on April 28, 2019 by eliesbik

A post that has nothing to do with microbiology – but a little bit with science/media integrity, which is my other line of interest.

This is a thread that I did on Twitter. You can find the unroll by Thread Reader here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1121304149079887873.html?refreshed=1556233869

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OK, so Facebook showed me this video that turns out to be an ad for the Sleepgram pillow. It talks about a tornado, a teacher who saved children, and a scientist who sent pillows to help them sleep. It seems to be a complete fake.

First of all, the photos used in the video appear to be stockphotos, not from the real events. The tornado that ruined a school in Arkoma OK really happened, but several other parts cannot be confirmed online.

The part that intrigued me is about Dr. Judith Owens, who is a sleep scientist. According to the video, she works on “micronerves” (uggh) and she developed this amazing pillow that she sent to the school to help the kids take better naps.

Dr. Owens is real, and she is indeed a sleep scientist. But she does not seem to work on “micronerves” or seem to have a connection to Sleepgram. Can anyone here confirm that she does?
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=j…

Here are some other things mentioned in the Sleepgram video that I cannot find any record for online. Can someone confirm these are true?

* A tornado struck Arkoma, Oklahoma 18 months ago near the Arkmore Preschool – true or false?

FAKE: The picture showing that the Oklahoma school was “badly damaged” shows a school bus damaged in a tornado in Henryville, Indiana, in 2012. That is not in Oklahoma, folks.

Here is a link with the original story:

Part 2: School and bus in path of 2012 Henryville tornadoOut of the ferocity that destroyed homes, schools and part of a forest emerged stories of love and death — and miracles.https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/03/02/part-2-school-and-bus-path-2012-henryville-tornado/98625364/

Then the story continues that Miss Wendy, the teacher, saved all the children in some miraculous, yet, undisclosed way. Again, I cannot find anything about Miss Wendy’s rescue online.

When Miss Wendy’s kids no longer could sleep because they were afraid of tornadoes, she turned to Dr. Owen for help. “Dr. Owens is a celebrated sleep specialist at the Cleveland Clinic”.

FAKE: While there is a scientist called Judith Owens, she works at the Sleep Center at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School
childrenshospital.org/directory/phys…

And that photo is a Shutterstock stockphoto.

Here is what you get when you Google “Owens” “Cleveland Clinic” and “Micronerves”.
ONE search result.

And it is another person complaining about this video.

Then, the video continues, (fake) Dr. Owens sent 30 (fake) pillows to (fake) Arkmore Preschool. And low and behold, now those poor kids, who had nothing left but the clothes on their back, could finally sleep.
*sobs quietly*

The video ad ends with Dr. Owens promising to “give her share” to more poor children. Of course, as long as you order your #SleepGram pillow now!

So much false advertising over the back of real tornado-struck towns and children. And scientists.

Unfortunately, @facebook, who claims to make it easier to report fake news, does not allow me to flag this ad for fakeness (is that a word?).

Well I reported it under “other”. I also noticed that the video/ad had 23 comments, all by women, and I was the only critical one. The rest was like “Miss Wendy is a hero” and “Should we get that pillow?” Maybe those 22 other women are all fake too.

Well, the name of the company that runs the video ad is “ImageHype”. I guess that tells you something is very fake already.

It is just sickening that @Sleepgram is trying to make money with a fake sob story about children and tornadoes and scientists.

Real kids have died in tornadoes (see e.g. Moore Tornado; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Moor…), and to make up such a story trying to sell pillows is just wrong.

And @Facebook should work harder not allowing these fake videos on their website. As I could tell from the comments, too many people fall for these scams. Facebook, you can hire me to do some fact checking.

2 thoughts on “Pillow talk – a misleading ad for the SleepGram pillow”

Sherry says:

May 8, 2019 at 9:29 am

Thanks so much for flagging this and doing the research. A family member inadvertently shared this, and I thought the very same thing, that it was stock photos cobbled together to jerk people’s emotions around, and not real. Grrrr!

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Bill says:

July 24, 2019 at 8:23 pm

I live in Oklahoma City and have researched this through friends I have at one of our local TV news stations. Yes, it’s fake and misleading.

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