30 Sickening Industrial Secrets Only Insiders Know

Patient confidentiality just means your name isn’t in the story, not that your story won’t get told. Also, in some cases, doctors may disclose personal information without breaching duties of confidentiality under certain circumstances, such as when the disclosure is of overall benefit to a patient who lacks the capacity to consent. Legally, a doctor must disclose information if the doctor is ordered to do so by a judge. Also, a patient’s consent to disclose information may be explicit or implied. Explicit consent is given when a patient actively agrees to the use or disclosure of information. Implied consent refers to circumstances in which it would be reasonable to infer that the patient agrees to the use of the information, even though this has not been directly expressed.

2. The reason why Mad Cow Disease started to spread and became a problem a few years ago was that the beef industry used to grind up some of the cattle parts that were not used for human consumption and put it back into the food supply of the living cattle, including brains and spinal cord. Since then they have determined that these parts, in particular, have more potential to be infectious and so they now only feed sheep to cows and vice versa.

3. The fresh chocolate chip cookie scent that can you smell outside of the Magic Kingdom bakery in Disneyland is artificial. It is piped out there to draw you into the bakery. They're called “Smellitzers”, which are targeted scent cannons. They also purposefully crank up the air conditioning in the shops during wintertime to sell more sweatshirts. You’d think if it is really worth the cost, but then you forget that they sell their sweatshirts for a huge markup ($75 last time I checked) and they actually own their own power plant. Club 33 is the most difficult-to-access spot in Disneyland. Hidden in plain sight in New Orleans Square, this 5-star restaurant was originally envisioned by Walt Disney as a quiet place to personally entertain corporate sponsors and special guests. It's the only place in the Magic Kingdom that sells alcohol. Also, all of the plants in Tomorrowland are edible and chewing gum is not sold anywhere in Disneyland.

4. If your store-bought water bottle doesn’t specifically say “Spring Water” then it is actually just tapped water. Companies find municipal water supplies in the US that have the ideal water conditions, and pump it straight to the bottle with little or no processing (at a marginal cost of less than a penny per bottle). Some name brands may do a little more, like having additives to give their water a consistent and specific taste profile.

5. Juries can return a not guilty verdict even if they agree that the defendant broke the law, if they feel the law itself is unjust. This is referred to as jury nullification and judges do not want jurors to know about it, even going so far as to hold people handing out literature about it in front of courthouses in contempt of court. Although, times are changing because it is very hard to prevent, and many judges now rightly defend it. Some states even have laws requiring jurors to be informed, like New Hampshire. It's not illegal to inform jurors in the courtroom, but when someone on the street informs people going into a courthouse, the law gets murkier.

Many of the big brands like Apple, Samsung and Sony are profiting from child labor in Africa. Modern electronics have minerals that come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a war-torn place rich in must-have materials that are rarely found elsewhere. It's estimated that more than half of the world's cobalt supply comes from the DRC. About 20% of it comes from “artisanal miners,” who are women and children as young as seven who scavenge for rocks containing cobalt in the discarded by-products of industrial mines, and who wash and sort the ore before it is sold. Exposure to cobalt dust can result in “hard metal lung disease,” which is deadly. India has a large portion of its "workforce" powered by child-labor. A 2015 report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) puts the number of child workers in India aged 5 to 17 at 5.7 million, out of 168 million globally. While there are no provable links to International Corporations, there are there are more than 45 million people trapped in modern slavery. You simply can’t get that many people trapped into slavery without big corporations being behind it.

7. Major book publishers in America have an agreement with major bookstores that if the books don't sell, the stores can return them for credit with that publisher. It incentivizes the store to take risks with their stock. Some stores don't send them back, though. For books that are cheaper to print than they are to ship, the publisher doesn't necessarily want the book back. They just want proof that the store isn't lying when they say it didn't sell. So, many publishers allow bookstores to rip the covers off of their books and mail those back and destroy the rest of the book. This is why how lots of books have warnings on the first page saying, essentially, “If you bought this book without a cover, its stolen.”

8. In the USA, if someone shoplifts and gets caught by Loss Prevention, they only want back the stolen stuff to prevent loss from the store (hence the name). They are specifically instructed to not touch or run after the shoplifter as they could pose a safety risk. So if a shoplifter drops the stock and runs, it’s entirely possible that they won’t face any consequences.

9. During the height of the early 2000s carb craze, Pringles wanted to formulate a healthier, “light” version of their crisps. They worked hard to use less fat and shortening but it just didn't work. Without those binding agents, the Pringles just couldn't hold their shape. They were ready to give up when someone in marketing came up with a solution that was equal parts sinister and genius. They were suggested to just make them unhealthier, and that was it. The original formulation was sold as a “light” version, and they purposefully made a less healthy version that was marketed as “regular” Pringles.

10. The pilot flying your plane (primarily budget / short haul) may only have gotten four hours of sleep last night and is so tired he can barely be trusted to drive his car home after he lands the plane. In one survey, 56% of pilots have admitted to sleeping on the job, with 29% waking up to find the other pilot asleep as well. Despite the tiring hours, for the first few years, the person fueling the plane makes more than the regional pilots.

Industrially farmed egg hens are starved to produce more eggs. They're viewed as machinery, therefore when their productivity drops, they are taken off feed which causes their body to go into the last ditch “pump out as many eggs to reproduce” cycle. Their feathers fall out, their combs bleach and their bones break. They're then ground up and turned into pellets to feedback to the other chickens.

12. Pharmaceutical companies are using a loophole to patent certain drugs that have been used for decades to treat certain diseases effectively, but those drugs were never actually FDA-approved for that particular disease. The most controversial case in point is the drug colchicine, which has been used for decades to help people with flares of a painful and disabling condition called gout. A drug company did a simple and inexpensive study recently that showed statistical significance that colchicine helps people with acute gout flares, something all prescribers have known (again, for decades). They went ahead and got FDA approval and now have the rights to re-brand it. Colchicine is now ONLY available under the trade name Colcrys and sells for about $5 per pill. When it was produced generically it only cost a few pennies per pill.

13. Large corporations regularly steal ideas from small-time inventors. Imagine this scenario, you have a new invention that you are sure will make you an overnight millionaire. You have gotten a meeting to show it to this major corporation that is interested in buying the product and putting it on the shelves. Millions of households will soon be able to purchase your ingenious product. Except, at the meeting, the major retailer will ask to keep one sample so that the product can be passed around to all of the decision-makers, some of which unfortunately couldn't be in the room that day. The moment you leave the office, that product will be shipped to China where it will be dissected, copied, changed just enough as necessary, and then that will be the ingenious new product that is sold on the shelves at this major retailer. Because they are a billion-dollar corporation, they can afford to keep a team of lawyers fighting any patent infringement lawsuits until the entrepreneur either gives up or takes a paltry settlement, just to pay off the debt of fighting the case. That’s why if you’ve invented something great, the first person you should talk to about it should be a lawyer.

14. Everyone knows that the government wastes money, but the general population has no idea how much the army will spend on a vehicle that will quite possibly never get used. If you ever drive on a base and see the lineup of heavy armored vehicles that look brand new, it’s because they probably haven't moved since they got them. Plus the military has no concept of investment. Meaning that it will gladly make the decision to save $1 million now, but pay $10 million down the line for maintenance/upgrades/training, rather than pay $5 million now and actually save money over time. This bad practice is compounded by the fact that they will often refuse to scrap the poor investment until well after its run over budget. “Sunk cost” is a concept that is completely lost on the military.

15. Nearly every caller you hear on top 40 radio stations are either an intern or someone else close to the studio. Nearly all callers are fake. The “War of The Roses” episodes are obviously fake too. There’s an FCC law that requires you to get permission before you record a phone call for broadcast. That’s impossible to do with the live radio if you’re really surprising someone. So, you can pretty much assume that all “prank calls” on the radio are either fake or illegal. Contests are rigged too and are mostly won by regular callers all the time. Most of the music and the chat for the shows is also set for the week.

The $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a research paper goes 100% to the publisher, 0% to the authors. If you just email the author to ask for their papers, they are allowed to send them to you for free, and we will be genuinely delighted to do so.

17. The majority of ice machines are disgusting. The ice in your drink can be harboring really disgusting bacteria because ice machines are often last on the priority list for cleaning in restaurants and bars. In 2013, a study in the UK showed that ice in six out of 10 restaurants contained more bacteria than toilet water.

18. If you are living in 2018, you already know that palm oil is awfully unsustainable. Many palm oil companies employ the slash and burn method. They cut down and burn rainforest, plant palm oil palms in its place. Lots of rainforest around the world has already been destroyed for palm plantations. Worse yet, there are even rumors of black market bounties from those companies on endangered wildlife such as orangutans. Kill and remove the endangered species, so that the governments will let you slash and burn. So what? You can easily avoid palm oil? Not exactly. Palm oil is in nearly every grocery store item. Look at the ingredient list of anything in your home (like food, cleaning supplies, etc.) and you probably will see a form of palm oil (look for anything with the word palm, such as palmitate).

19. Dove and Axe are owned by the same company, Unilever. One promotes female self-confidence by re-defining beauty while the other advertises itself using highly sexualized images of females. They tell both men and women what they want to hear. While they get to appear to be empowering on the surface when in reality they’re perpetuating the same kind of insecurities as the rest of the beauty industry that keep women buying their products.

20. HeadOn is a homeopathic remedy. As of September 2000, there were two versions of HeadOn available in stores: “ExtraStrength and Migraine.” Chemical analysis of the Migraine formulation has shown that it is made up of wax and three other “active ingredients” which iris versicolor 12× (a toxic flower), white bryony 12× (a toxic vine), and potassium dichromate 6× (a known carcinogen). The “×” notation indicates that the three chemicals have been diluted to 1 part per trillion, 1 part per trillion, and 1 part per million respectively. This amount of dilution is so great that the product has been described as a placebo; with skeptic James Randi calling it a “major medical swindle.” The company can’t prove that it has any effect on headaches, so they can’t mention it doing anything about headaches on the commercial. That left them in a bit of a jam, so they put out commercials that just said “Head On: Apply directly to the forehead.”

Most baby carrots that you buy in the grocery store are not actually baby carrots and should be labeled as baby-cut carrots. These carrots start out as regular sized carrots that may have some cosmetic issues. They are then cut into pieces and put through a peeler. Though it may be misleading marketing, it is actually a pretty green thing to do, because otherwise the unsightly carrots probably just get thrown away.

22. Majority of so the called brand ice cream you buy at the grocery store are not labeled ice cream but rather frozen dessert. The term is often used on products which are similar in taste and texture to ice cream, but which do not meet the legal definition of that term because they are made primarily with vegetable oils, i.e. mellorine, as opposed to milk or cream.

23. Lego bricks were based in part on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and then released in 1947. Lego modified the design of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample given to it by the British supplier of an injection-molding machine that the company had purchased and started making Lego Bricks. Kiddicraft founder Harry Page died in 1957 without ever knowing about it. In 1981, Lego acquired Kiddicraft so that they can successfully sue Tyco, another brick maker in the late 1980s citing copyright infringement. They had bought Kiddicraft earlier to make their claim stronger. The court however decided against Lego, saying bricks are not patentable.

24. Similar to airline seats, large hotel chains purposely overbook rooms by up to 15%. According to a study published in 2013 in the Journal of Applied Sciences, the no-show rate at hotels is between 5% and 15%. According to the study, in rare cases, when guests don’t get rooms at the booked hotel, they end up in a room at a nearby branch, with a room of similar value. The phenomenon is common enough for it to have its own phrase - apparently being bumped from a hotel is called “walking a guest”.

25. There is very little profit in new car sales. Dealership’s sales department makes most of its money from used cars, add-on products (alarm systems, extended warranties, GAP insurance, etc.) and manufacturer bonuses from hitting sales targets. Therefore they concentrate on volume, not profits. The more new cars they sell and the faster they sell them, the more it helps their business. To get a good deal on a new car you don't need to spend hours haggling. You just need to be honest about what you want to accomplish and get straight to the point, so the dealership can sell you a car quickly and move on to the next customer. Once you figure out what kind of car you want, just go online do your research and set a budget. If nobody agrees to your terms, consider going out a further distance or increasing your budget.