Professional competitive athletes are a weird bunch, and not just because they can run a mile in the same amount of time it takes most of us to walk a city block. They're often superstitious, tying their chances of success to rituals and good luck charms. Baseball players stick with a lucky number or bat. Pitchers make their time on the mound their own, developing little mannerisms they carry out before every pitch. The jinx is an all-powerful force not to be trifled with. Superstition is just a part of baseball culture that's grown up with the sport over more than a century. And sometimes technology--or something masquerading as technology--gets involved.

In the 2000s, baseball players began wearing necklaces created by a Japanese company called Phiten. Jewelry and crosses regularly serve as good luck charms, but Phiten claims its necklaces offer more than luck. Supposedly by combining melted titanium with water, Phiten created a dye that imbues its jewelry with a unique charge. And what does that charge do, exactly? It "create[s] a stabilizing field that potentially enhances the bodies natural functions or systems." That's the power of Aqua-Titanium.

Photo Credit: KT Tape

Baseball players aren't the only ones superstitious enough to buy into vague charms that have never passed through the FDA. Here's another Japanese idea athletes have grappled onto: kinesiology tape, or k tape, which may support muscles and relieve pain. Or it may do absolutely nothing. And who's wearing this tape now?

Oh, just Olympians like beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh, who won gold at the 2008 Beijing games. A slew of studies have found little or no proof that k tape actually does anything. So what is it: pure superstition, technology we can't quite pin down, or the power of positive thinking manifested in an adhesive strip of cotton?

Kinesiology tape has actually been around for more than 30 years. It was created by a Japanese chiropractor named Kenzo Kase, but the material didn't spread through the sports world until the 2000s. Here's his dead simple explanation of what k tape does:

"Your pain sensors are located between the epidermis and the dermis, the first and second layers of your skin, so I thought that if I applied tape to the pain it would lift the epidermis slightly up and make a space between the two layers. This would in turn allow blood to flow more easily to the injured area. But you can use the tape in lots of ways, depending on the width and the amount of stretch."

Well, that answer doesn't sound like complete gibberish. But it only accounts for one thing: pain. The official website makes this claim:

"The Kinesio Taping Method is designed to facilitate the body’s natural healing process while allowing support and stability to muscles and joints without restricting the body’s range of motion. It is used to successfully treat a variety of orthopedic, neuromuscular, neurological and medical conditions."

Photo Credit: Flickr user breatheindigital via Creative Commons

As Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic points out, an analysis of 10 studies on the tape (an additional 87 studies were examined and tossed out for not having control groups or reporting on a musculoskeletal outcome) doesn't turn up positive results. The stuff seems like any other athletic tape: "In conclusion, there was little quality evidence to support the use of KT over other types of elastic taping in the management or prevention of sports injuries. KT may have a small beneficial role in improving strength, range of motion in certain injured cohorts and force sense error compared with other tapes, but further studies are needed to confirm these findings."

Athletes didn't just discover the tape naturally: it became a hit at the 2008 Olympics after rolls were donated to 58 countries. It got people talking, it got people curious, and hey--when someone wearing it wins a gold medal or claims their pain has evaporated, you try it out.

We'll call Kase's tape one powerful placebo. The material is, at least, more grounded in reality than Phiten necklaces. Here's the best bit from Phiten's website:

"The innovative Aqua-Titanium material has been fused into the fabric using Phitens unprecedented Phild (pronounced: filed) processing technology. Aqua-Titanium particles will not separate even if the fabric is washed or absorbs perspiration, so you don't have to worry about moisture getting your Phiten products wet. The power of Aqua-Titanium is permanent, which means the effect itself will never go away. Phild processing is applied not only to Aqua-Titanium particles but to all the materials that comprises a Phiten Necklace."

Aqua-Titanium: it lasts forever! While kinesio tape does, at least, fulfill a basic role as an adhesive, Phiten's necklaces are nothing but jewelry that purport to create a magic "stabilizing field." The only information online describing Phiten's effectiveness come from Phiten itself. Surprise, surprise. That hasn't stopped athletes, of course: the products have only gotten more popular, and Phiten now sells MLB, NBA and PGA gear. Phiten is the pseudoscience equivalent of a lucky rabbit's foot.

Athletes really are the perfect targets. They all want a competitive edge. They've got plenty of disposable income. And, yeah, they're about as willing to pour their superstition into unproven products as Hollywood celebrities are to believe in Scientology. In 2010, the Telegraph called Power Balance bracelets a fad among athletes, which got endorsements from the likes of Shaquille O'Neal.

The $60 "hologram" bracelets, which claim to help direct the flow of energy through the body just like Phitens, don't actually do much of anything. The Australian distributor had to back down from its advertisements claiming the bracelets affected the body in any way. They then wrote "We admit there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct..."

Want to see some real science impact the athletic community? Read up on swimsuits. A wave of high-tech suits helped swimmers shatter records by whole seconds in 2009. They were banned in 2010, meaning swimmers aren't using polyurethane suits in competition at the London Olympics. But companies like Speedo and adidas are still engineering suits that are just a little bit faster and a little bit lighter.