‘Sense About Science’ slaughters celebrity silliness

Posted by ERV on January 2, 2012
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Oh my gawd this is so fun!

You know how we are always screaming online about some stupid thing Jenny McCarthy or Bill O’Reilly has said/done? A group of folks at Sense About Science have gotten together some of the stupid, if not outright dangerous ‘potentially misleading’ things celebrities have said about earth science/heath/diet/etc and matched them up with real explanations from real scientists/educated people within the appropriate field.

PDF– Celebrities and Science 2011

It includes a couple of my pet-peeves– ‘boosting’ your immune system and mega-dosing on vitamins in the absence of any kind of deficiency. You all will like it! Go read!

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Comments

  1. #1 cthellis
    January 2, 2012

    Wow, just…

    Wow.

    o_O

  2. #2 Woden
    January 2, 2012

    Awesome group! I went ahead and shared this with some people I know… hopefully they’ll pass it on, too. It’s always nice to find more groups that fact-check these kinds of things. :)

  3. #3 fnxtr
    January 3, 2012

    fb linked this immediately, thanks, ERV! Looking forward to selective hyperskepticism from some newage* flakey friends. :-)

    *rhymes with “sewage”.

  4. #4 St Louis Psychiatrists
    January 3, 2012

    It is funny indeed.
    It is a good habit for people to say what they want to say, but think about it twice before uttering anything that sounds different & pointless.

  5. #5 Mu
    January 3, 2012

    Now if only one of the celebrities would go on the record to state “I learned something from science and I was wrong …” that would be a true win.

  6. #6 harold
    January 3, 2012

    Am I the only one who was surprised by how much LESS harmful and insane these celebrity comments were, than the crap I see every day? Brazil nuts are very good for you (assuming they’re fresh and not contaminated with anything) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=brazil%20nuts, accupuncture is pretty harmless, having an un-needed IV drip is stupid but vitamins are usually pretty harmless, the original whale sperm comment was obviously juvenile humor rather than infantile ignorance, colon cleansing is probably useless and could theoretically be mildly harmful but is not that big of a deal, etc. And sunlight exposure may be net good for you; of course you should avoid burn and have relatively frequent skin examinations if you live in a sunny climate http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21551241

    I didn’t see any evolution denial, AGW denial, false claims about “abundant” fossil fuel supplies, anti-vaccination claims, HIV denial, promotion of “faith healing” as an alternative to medicine, or anything else like that.

    Celebrities appear to be more responsible, as a group, than US politicians, media pundits, and religious leaders.