Is the International Institute of Colorimetry a front for Cerium Visual Technologies?
The International Institute of Colorimetry (IIoC) is a rather grand-sounding organisation that operates out of some unbranded private serviced offices at 7-10 Adam Street. Adam House, according to its website, offers mailing addresses for £65 a month and mail forwarding for £85 a month and offers the means to 'register your company at a prestigious London West End address' without, I suppose, being able to afford a prestigious London West End address.
The IIoC 'is committed to raising awareness in schools, relevant professions and the community at large, of the need for early diagnosis of visual stress.'
The IIoC website contains the usual visual stress misinformation. For example, the claim that a double-blind placebo-controlled trial in 1994 proved the beneficial effect of colour on the perceptual distortions, said to be associated with visual stress, that was not entirely attributable to the placebo effect. In fact, this trial reviewed elsewhere in this blog showed nothing of the sort. It was so hampered by follow up that no conclusions could be drawn.
The IIoC appears to have 18 UK individual members and 12 corporate members. There is also a list of international users of the intuitive colorimeter but it is not clear if they are members or not.
All in all a pretty small scale outfit.
The IIoC website contains a link to purchase overlay products that will take you to Cerium Visual Technologies.
Cerium Visual Technologies a company that markets the Intuitive Colorimeter and Precision Tinted Lenses as well as its own branded overlays. I don't have much of a problem with their website apart from the usual misrepresentation of exploratory studies at high risk of bias. It is obvious that they have product sell and it is a case of buyer beware.
Things start to look interesting when you look at the Companies House entries for the International Institute of Colorimetry and Cerium Visual Technologies. Click on the people tab for each listing and you will find the same names albeit in a different order -Marlyn Ann Sangster and Kimberley Jane Harrison are active members of both organisations. Even if you look at the resigned members - Peter Roy Collier and Clive Laurence Sangster were formerly active for both organisations.
There is nothing illegal in this. However, the Institute of Colorimetry might appear at first sight to be an independent scholarly body with an international reach. It seems to me that it is something different and I think there is a public interest in knowing how these two organisations are intertwined. For example, the IIoC pushed the BBC to revise an article reporting research that showed visual factors do not play a big role in dyslexia and to include a comment from Bruce Evans who argued (wrongly in my view) that the tests used in this particular study would not have detected visual stress among dyslexics. In fact, contrast sensitivity at the spatial frequencies said to be aversive in VS was measured and there was no difference between normal and impaired readers. My point is this, would the BBC have taken the IIoC so seriously if it had been aware of the overlap with Cerium who have a financial interest in visual stress treatment?
