Friday, July 1, 2011

Baby Einstein creators win lawsuit

Here is news about the Disney baby videos:
But, the Denver Post reports, a University of Washington study bashing the products, a major lawsuit and a slew of bad press tainted the "Baby Einstein" name. Now, Julie Aigner-Clark and Bill Clark are getting some redemption, according to the newspaper.

The couple, who live outside Denver, forced the university, which paid them $175,000 for legal fees, to hand over the original research, which proves the study had several flaws, the Post reports.

The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2007, claimed "Baby Einstein" actually made a child's vocabulary worse than kids who did not watch the videos, according to the newspaper. Headlines world-wide screamed that "Baby Einstein" made kids dumber.
The videos are probably worthless, but that does not excuse the university researchers doing a sloppy study and then refusing to release their research data. The standards in the pediatric community are pretty low when they make proclamation about what is good for kids. Much of the time, they are completely wrong.

Einstein had nothing to do with any of this junk, but an Israeli university gets royalties on the videos just because they use Einstein's name. I did not have to pay to use the name in my Einstein book.

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