Most alternative medicines come in the form of pills (homeopathic tablets), liquids (essential oils), or nothing (Reiki). The CieAura Company distinguishes itself from that bunch by selling what it calls Transparent Holographic Chips for pain relief.

But while its product is a little different from the others, the verbiage is pure alt-med. Its explanatory statement crams in almost every cliché possible: Meridians, balance, blockage, energy, flow, natural, vibrations, chakra, and holistic. Also included are science terms like organs and cells even though these have no relevance to the product. This is a common ploy when trying make counterfeit products seem genuine.

The cieaura.com website also makes the expected Appeal to Antiquity: “In every culture the sacred explanation of energies were provided by the healers or sages. Healers of old felt that negative thoughts and emotions carried by the energy currents caused blockages resulting in disease. The ancients believed removing energy blocks and balancing energy fields would restore health.”

Left out of this nostalgia for druid doctors and shamanic surgeons is that it refers to a time when the average lifespan was 32 and most parents lost multiple newborns. These ancient medical ideas were written on parchment and delivered by donkey, so why use word processors and websites to praise them if old equals ideal? Many alternative medicine practitioners and followers embrace modernity in every aspect of their lives except improved health.

The appeal to antiquity shifts abruptly to a trumpeting of the cutting edge: “There has been an explosion in the technology of intrinsic energy research instrumentation. Tremendous advances are being made in being able to measure and verify the existence of these energies.” While it is true that devices such a MIT’s Super Quantum Induction Device have allowed the detection of extremely faint magnetic fields, there’s no reason to believe these energies are being transferred to a chip you can slap on your knee and end your gout bout.

In what passes for their attempt to explain the process, the company gives us this: “CieAura Transparent Holographic Chips adhesively charge intrinsic energies into holograms for the purpose of influencing the human cycle. The natural meridians in our body get out of balance and cause blockages in the natural energy flow between the vital organs, cells, and tissues of the body. Without help, there is rarely a balance in our body that keeps energy, concentration, stamina, and yin and yang at the optimum level.”

Holographic chips plus yin and yang. Whether you prefer your hogwash ancient or futuristic, CieAura has you covered. This gobbledygook is likely intended to impress or at least bewilder. Navigating this sea of confusion, we learn that these chips will be applied to the body for pain relief by tapping into natural energies. Almost as if anticipating my question, the authors write, “These intrinsic energies are not measurable in the same manner as frequencies and vibrations are measurable.” This inability to verify the existence of the crucial feature of the product is sadly typical for alternative medicine. As is this type of phrase: “These holograms bind sound vibrations to influence the human energy field.” They never confirm what type of energy it is, how it is accessed, how sound vibrations are bound, how they are transferred to the chips, or how this would take away Aunt Millie’s backache.

While offering a meandering description of this product and how it works, we at least are given clear instructions for its use. The chips are meant to be placed on the skin or clothing, as getting them within two inches of the body will activate them, with the effect lasting about two days. If this is true, that means the only ones who would ever benefit from them are the persons producing, stocking, or delivering them. None of those activities are possible without getting within two inches of the chips, so they would be activated and used up by the time the customer got them.

Whoever the activation impacts, the recipient will be receiving “non-invasive, non-transdermal chips, which are 100 percent natural.” The Appeal to Nature fallacy aside, I’m unsure where these transparent holographic chips are growing wild.

Perhaps the website’s lone accuracy is telling us, “The chips are safe and non-transdermal, and no drugs enter the body. There are no side effects.” In other words, it’s not medicine. Transdermal describes the route whereby active ingredients are delivered across the skin. If there are no active ingredients to deliver, there is nothing to effect the body and no way to mitigate any pain. That chip on your shoulder or anywhere else is worthless.

Even if it did work, one statement from the website accidentally reveals that it could only impact one type of malady, not all of them. For it noted that specific frequencies were found to be effective for the different types of pain. Yet there is only one type of chip and it cannot be adjusted.

Without offering evidence, the website claims that heart attacks are much more likely during heightened solar activity. It thus deduces, “This indicates brain waves can be entrained by outside electromagnetic forces. Of course, this is conflating correlation and causation, and maybe they have it backwards. Perhaps a cardiac arrest sends out negative yin-yang streams that screw with the sun’s balance.