Celebrity bad science: Dried placenta pills and oxygen shots



By Kate Kelland

LONDON |
Fri Dec 28, 2012 4:10am EST


LONDON (Reuters) – Pop guru Simon Cowell carries pocket-sized inhalable oxygen shots, America’s “Mad Men” singer Jan Jones favors dusty placenta pills, and British soap star Patsy Palmer rubs coffee granules into her skin.

Celebrities frequency bashful divided from open peddling of indeterminate ideas about health and science, and 2012 was no exception.

In a annual list of a year’s misfortune abuses opposite science, a Sense About Science (SAS) debate also named former U.S. presidential claimant Mitt Romney for swelling misinformation about windows on planes, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for fake justifications for peeing in a pool.

To assistance set a record straight, SAS, a gift dedicated to assisting people make clarity of scholarship and evidence, invited competent scientists to respond to some of a wilder pseudo-scientific claims put about by a abounding and famous.

It suggested Romney, who wondered aloud in Sep since aircraft crews don’t only open a windows when there’s a glow on board, should listen to aeronautical operative Jakob Whitfield:

“Unfortunately, Mitt, opening a window during tallness wouldn’t do most good,” a scientist said. “In fact, if we could open a window while in flight, a atmosphere would rush out…because atmosphere moves from a high vigour cabin to a reduce vigour outside, substantially causing serve repairs and damage.”

January Jones’s dusty placenta pills, that a singer certified in Mar she consumed after giving birth, win no preference with Catherine Collins, principal dietician during St George’s Hospital in London.

“Nutritionally, there’s zero to be gained from eating your placenta – raw, cooked, or dried,” Collins said. “Apart from iron, that can be simply found in other dietary choices or supplements, your placenta will yield toxins and other unpalatable substances it had successfully prevented from reaching your baby in utero.”

Gary Moss, a curative scientist, patiently points out to Palmer that while caffeine might have an outcome on cellulite, rubbing coffee granules into a skin is doubtful to work, given a caffeine can’t shun a granules to dig a skin.

Phelps’s explain that it’s excellent to pee in a pool since “chlorine kills it” is put true by biochemist Stuart Jones, who reminds him that “urine is radically waste so there isn’t indeed anything to kill in a initial place”.

And for Cowell, Kay Mitchell a scientist during a Centre for Altitude Space and Extreme Environment Medicine warns that really high levels of oxygen can in fact be poisonous – quite in a lungs, where oxygen levels are highest.

“Celebrity comments transport distant and fast, so it’s critical that they speak sense,” pronounced Sense About Science’s handling executive Tracey Brown. “The improbable and honestly dangerous claims about how to equivocate cancer, urge skin or remove weight are apropos ever some-more ridiculous. And unfortunately they have a most aloft form than a investigate and evidence.”

To inspire some-more commitment among luminary pseudo-scientists in a future, SAS supposing a checklist of “misleading scholarship claims” it suggests should be avoided:

* “Immune boosting” – we can’t and we don’t need to

* “Detox” – your liver does this

* “Superfood” – there is no such thing, only dishes that are high in some nutrients

* “Oxygenating” – your lungs do this

* “Cleansing” – we shouldn’t be perplexing to clean anything other than your skin or hair.

Via: Health Medicine Network