Celebrities Vs Science

The actor, who played the Hulk in The Avengers movie series, spoke on Capitol Hill on an incredibly important public health topic. What expertise does he have in that area? Well, none. But he is a 9/11 truther who rejects the scientific consensus on GMOs while spreading conspiracy theories about the Zika virus.
I must be getting old because I don't know who some of these young whippersnappers are anymore. Apparently, a Canadian singer named Grimes (who happens to be dating Elon Musk) is somebody I need to pay attention to. And as is often the case with celebrities, it's not for a good reason. 
The Amazon tycoon has big plans for space. He envisions a future in which a "trillion" (yes, a trillion!) people live in giant, rotating spaceships like that one from the movie 'Passengers." There are some scientific problems with his argument. Let's take a look.
There's simply no way of knowing what anti-vaxxer RFK, Jr. will say on any given day. One day, he's comparing vaccines to the Holocaust. The next, he's helping spread cervical cancer.
Would GlaxoSmithKline hire Robert De Niro to host an award ceremony for vaccine research? Or would Unilever hire Gwyneth Paltrow for awards on food science? Those would be equivalent to what the Breakthrough Prize is doing by paying Pierce Brosnan.
Partisan political commentator John Oliver of HBO's "Last Week Tonight" took some cheap shots at us, at the behest of an anti-science activism group. Here's what happened and how you can help us respond to his efforts to manipulate science for his agenda.  
With the cancellation of "The Dr. Oz Show", his alternative medicine audience should not think of it as a time to mourn. but instead should take a moment to celebrate the man who created all their worst fears; they should rejoice a guy who wore medical scrubs during a show in which he suggested apple juice was as dangerous for children as plutonium, who taught concerned viewers to fear chicken and to love juice cleanses. They should applaud that for a decade (or whatever) we had a place to learn The Secrets Of Plus Size Models, that we had someone on television not afraid to do an episode called "Charlie Sheen Heads to Mexico."
Awarding an honorary doctorate to an anti-GMO activist could only happen in an Orwellian universe. That's where up is down, right is wrong, and the truth is just a matter of opinion. But that's the state of academia in 2018.
The reason The Population Bomb was so terrible is not that its predictions were wrong; most scientists make incorrect predictions. No, the book is terrible because of how it made people in the developed world feel about people in the developing world. Namely, that they are little more than hungry cockroaches who shouldn't be fed.
Actress Zooey Deschanel has a new startup — The Farm Project. In her latest video episode she urges consumers to stop buying produce from the grocery store — unless it's organic.
PSA: Despite what Goop advises, please don't shoot coffee up your rectum.   
Alas, the $37 billion dietary supplements industry likely will remain unregulated for the foreseeable future. And with it, the fight against junk science and bogus health claims must soldier on.