People, People, People...

And now back to one of my favorite topics, Americans being duped by celebrities or celebrity endorsements into buying things they don’t need, things of little value or things that are potentially dangerous. On an individual basis it’s sad, and on a societal one it’s very discouraging.

If your car broke down, would you have it towed to the local TV station for the news anchor to look at – even if his or her hobby happened to be car repair? Probably not.

If your toilet backed up would you invite the local golf pro over to fix it – even if he had an engineering degree and an interest in plumbing? I don’t think so.

If you had a health question, would you seek advice from a Hollywood star instead of a health professional? The answer should be the same, but then how does Gwyneth Paltrow get away with it?

She holds health summits for her Goop brand charging $1500 per person, “despite repeated debunkings of her brand’s health claims, and piece after piece arguing the nonsense she sells is nothing more than snake oil.” This article comments on a new partnership with Netflix to push her products. In addition to her original lifestyle-and-wellness business, she owns a clothing manufacturer, a beauty company, an advertising hub, a publishing house, a podcast producer and several others. According to the New York Times, her brand is worth $250 million!

By playing on her celebrity status, Ms. Paltrow is reeling in customers by the boatload pedaling what many sources refer to at pseudoscience and misinformation. Errors in fashion may be OK; customers risk nothing more than possible derision. But when it comes to someone’s health, outcomes can reach beyond a waste of time and money to become dangerous or even fatal. 

Take for example one of the ten most read entries on the Goop site. “In consultation with Dr. Alejandro Junger, we created a week-long detox menu to recover from post-holiday indulgence.” Likely no one ever looked up the doctor’s credentials or questioned the efficacy of his advice before venturing into this experiment in self-medication. Unfortunately, as I’ve often written before in detail, detox plans are both unnecessary and dangerous. 

In other examples related to health, Goop continues a war on science with claims that are so outlandish that the whole thing could be mistaken for satire. But it’s not, and it’s very problematic. Dr. Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, is a frequent critic. “Assuming this isn’t performance art, the increasing popularity of companies like Goop is a cause for legitimate concern. Despite the best efforts of journalists and doctors, the debunkers are not winning the wellness war. Indeed, there is evidence that the trust people place in traditional sources of science is eroding.”

 Or as Vox put it just last summer, “Goop has been called out for bullshit over and over. But the brand seems to be stronger than ever.” Many agree that such opposition has just strengthened the brand among those already made suspicious of traditional medicine by so many other snake oil enterprises – basically appealing to those people who have sent their critical thinking on a long vacation.

It’s ironic that science brings us smart phones and the Internet so celebrities can use them to profit from the ignorance of people by selling and/or endorsing junk-science treatments and fake cures. It demonstrates the truth of what Isaac Asimov said many years ago: “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”