Top marks to Jim Coen at Franchise Perfection for bringing up a very important topic.
He posted a great article called Franchise Statistics Debunked Again! on his Let’s Talk Franchising blog and Blue MauMau.
I could not agree with him more: I get really, REALLY irritated when self=serving numbers are thrown around. The unsubstantiated drivel that comes [...]

Frank Zaid is a Canadian lawyer with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.
1. From his wikipedia page:

He has been listed as one of the leading franchise law practitioners in every published edition of the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory, the Lexpert/American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada.
In the 2005 and 2006 editions of Who’s [...]

Background:
Hyperkalaemic paralysis due to renal failure is a rare but potentially life threatening event. Case presentationWe present a 61 yr old Caucasian male who had sudden onset ascending flaccid paralysis. The EMS first diagnosis was acute ST- elevation myocardial infarction based on an EKG. In the emergency room (ER) due to careful history taking, serum [...]

Background:
Genome-scale metabolic models are powerful tools to study global properties of metabolic networks. They provide a way to integrate various types of biological information in a single framework, providing a structured representation of available knowledge on the metabolism of the respective species.
Results:
We reconstructed a constraint-based metabolic model of Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1, a soil bacterium of [...]

In a previous post entitled United Kingdom franchise media: What soap?, I took exception with an article that appeared in the Eastern Daily Press called Flourishing franchises buck trend.
It riled me so much that I fired off an email questioning the credibility of the sources (franchise banker, British Franchise Association, consultant/salesman, etc.).
Perpetuating the falsehood (franchises [...]

I had the great fortune of meeting Susan Kezios, the president of the American Franchisee Association in 2000.
She was brought to Toronto from their Chicago, U.S. offices to give expert witness testimony to the Ontario legislature Standing Committee on Regulation and Private Bills on March 6, 2000.

Here is the link to her testimony.

As you can [...]

Jason Gehrke writes a weblog called Franchise tips and trends in http://www.smartcompany.com.au. His latest article, Churning: The dark side of franchising, is predictable.
I tried to submit a comment but was unable.
Here is what I would have submitted:
First the industry experts said “There is no churning.” Second, they say, “Well, yes, there is but…There’s just a [...]

The fireworks were edited in, the young girl was just lip-syncing, and in the third case of misrepresentation from the Olympic opening ceremony, the 56 children representing China’s 56 ethnic groups have also been found to be mostly Han Chinese children dressed up to represent the minorities. This admission was first made by Yuan Zhifeng, [...]

The franchise industry is well-known for its hyperbole bordering on propaganda.
For the latest example of these half-truths and silent misrepresentations see a recent modestly named article: Franchising to the Rescue.
In my opinion, this is an unnecessarily biased and dangerous article for small business investors.
It’s assumption is that franchising is a safer investment than independent business. [...]