Science defamed by famed figures

LONDON - Reuters

‘Mad Man’ actress January Jones admits she consumed dried plasenta bills after giving birth. ABACAPRESS photo

Pop guru Simon Cowell carries pocket-sized inhalable oxygen shots, America’s “Mad Men” actress January Jones favors dried placenta pills, and British soap star Patsy Palmer rubs coffee granules into her skin.

Celebrities rarely shy away from public peddling of dubious ideas about health and science, and 2012 was no exception.

In its annual list of the year’s worst abuses against science, the Sense About Science (SAS) campaign also named former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney for spreading misinformation about windows on planes, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for false justifications for peeing in the pool.

To help set the record straight, SAS, a charity dedicated to helping people make sense of science and evidence, invited qualified scientists to respond to some of the wilder pseudo-scientific claims put about by the rich and famous.

It suggested Romney, who wondered aloud in September why aircraft crews don’t just open the windows when there’s a fire on board, should listen to aeronautical engineer Jakob Whitfield:
“In fact, if you could open a window whilst in flight, the air would rush out...because air moves from the high pressure cabin to the lower pressure outside, probably causing further injury and damage.”

Placenta bills

January Jones’s dried placenta pills, which the actress admitted in March she consumed after giving birth, win no favor with Catherine Collins, principal dietician at St George’s Hospital in London. “Nutritionally, there’s nothing to be gained from eating your placenta raw, cooked, or dried,” Collins said.

Gary Moss, a pharmaceutical scientist, points out to Palmer that while caffeine may have an effect on cellulite, rubbing coffee granules into the skin is unlikely to work, since the caffeine can’t escape the granules to penetrate the skin.

Phelps’s claim that it’s fine to pee in the pool because “chlorine kills it” is put straight by biochemist Stuart Jones, who reminds him that “urine is essentially sterile so there isn’t actually anything to kill in the first place.”

And for Cowell, scientist Kay Mitchell warns that very high levels of oxygen can in fact be toxic - particularly in the lungs, where oxygen levels are highest.