Snake oil is an expression that originally referred to fraudulent health products or unproven medicine but has come to refer to any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit. By extension, a snake oil salesman is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods or who is himself or herself a fraud, quack, charlatan, and the like. Two main hypotheses for the origin of the term are as follows: The more common theory is that the name originated in the Western regions of the United States and is derived from a topical preparation made from the Chinese Water Snake (Enhydris chinensis) … Continue reading 21st Century Snake Oil