False reports – including a fake CNN screenshot – are circulating on social media, claiming that a product based on honey can cure Alzheimer’s disease.
Under names such as Brain Honey, Mind Boost, Brain Vex or Memopezil, scammers are touting products said to be able to reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia – often with claims that they’ve been endorsed by Bill Gates.
Some reports also cite other celebrities, including Steve Martin, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, and news anchor Savannah Guthrie, as having endorsed the products.
But, said fact-checking site Snopes, “We found no evidence that Gates created, endorsed or sold products marketed under names such as ‘Brain Honey’, ‘Mind Boost’ and ‘Memopezil’. Rather, the ads and landing pages matched a familiar scam pattern of using Gates’ name and image to draw people into long sales pitches for unproven supplements.”
Most posts kick off by describing a ‘natural remedy’ consisting of honey combined with blueberries, cocoa, coffee or other foods, but then go on to push paid-for products.
“A new discovery what’s needed to stop brain degeneration to Alzheimer’s disease,” reads one Facebook post. “It is opposed by established medicine. Is it any good? Is this a scam? Well Bill Gates has funded the research.”
This post links to a fake report that Harvard has endorsed similar claims. It’s received tens of thousands of approving comments – although the sheer number of these indicates that they’re probably fake. Other posts fraudulently use the ABC News logo.
There is a certain amount of very limited evidence that honey can to a limited extent boost brain function, thanks to its high polyphenol content. However, research indicating this has not been subject to clinical intervention studies.
But the fake posts tend to be framed in the familiar ‘the medical establishment doesn’t want you to know this’ format, despite the fact that any real breakthrough would be thoroughly researched and plastered all over the media.
The Bill Gates ‘endorsement’ is designed to exploit the fact that Gates does genuinely fund Alzheimer’s research and is believed to have personally committed $100 million to research into new approaches to dementia.
“My dad died from Alzheimer’s, so my family knows first-hand how devastating it is to watch people you love struggle as the disease robs them of their mental capacity. In the United States, Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth most common cause of death—and yet as of today, there is no meaningful treatment for it,” he said.
“I’m hopeful that will change soon. There is a lot of amazing work being done in this field to delay Alzheimer’s and reduce its cognitive impact, and I’m lucky to support some of it.”
If you’re uncertain whether a celebrity endorsement is real, your first step should be to check whether the content comes from an official account.
Study the image or video for tell-tale signs that it’s a fake, such as inconsistent lighting or unnatural movements. You can also check its likely authenticity using, for example, the University of Buffalo’s DeepFake-O-Meter, which aggregates results from reliable AI media detection models across image, video, and audio.
