Pseudo-Science and Crackpot Quacks: 10 Celebrity Science Shockers

Celebrity quackery and pseudo-science is on the rise. This means that you can forget the notion that evidence-based science and medicine is the way for academic advancement. All you need is a camera, some dazzling white teeth (on display in a slightly manic smile i.e. the Tom Cruise) and you are free to influence the masses with your mumbo jumbo (scientifically known as bulls**t). Why else would people continue to shove Activia into their gullible mouths day after day thinking they are going to receive the benefits instantly from some mythical and magical gut bacteria. Wake up people, its nonsense. Just because some celebrity on the down-turn of their career or desperate for attention (most likely both) has been paid to tell you how fantastic it is.

But it gets so much worse than crappy yoghurts and anti-ageing creams that have the same chances of working on your wrinkles as fairy dust and spider webs. So sit back, relax and cower in horror as I take you through ten celebrity science shockers.

It’s celebrities in rehab everyone! It’s a scientific fact that there is a limited number of spaces allocated in rehab for celebrities and they must be filled at any one time to make sure that we are all constantly aware of the horrific plight of the celeb. All this time you thought that it was people in the third world that had it hard; you must feel pretty stupid now huh?

Additionally, unlike us mere mortals, celebrities never have to say they’re sorry…ever. No matter the behaviour, no matter how stomach churning, horror inducing and ‘illegal in over 100 countries’, their behaviour is, they always have an excuse…a mythical disease. Say a celebrity has broken into a zoo and abused one of the giraffes. This wouldn’t be considered illegal by the celebrity or anyone stupid to listen to said celebrity; it would be the result of a horrible affliction.

“I couldn’t help it” they would say. “I have Giraffe-must-touch-ism…it’s a terrible burden to bear, so I have decided to check myself into rehab. Only with the support of campfire sing-songs and mountain hikes, will I be able to be myself once more”.

What absolute drivel. Just like the alleged ‘exhaustion’ celebrities often check themselves into rehab for. They didn’t collapse in that night club with white power underneath their nose because they were in the midst of a drug addiction…it was just exhaustion of course.

And of course we must talk about Mel Gibson and his penchant for anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-everything else, rants. He didn’t call a female police officer ‘Sugar tits’ because he is just an awful, awful person, it’s because he was suffering from a ‘mystery illness’. A check-in to a treatment facility soon followed. Ah Mel, if recent news is anything to go by, you better get checked back in there.

Once the acting work dries up (and for a lot of celebrities it is inevitable) something must be done to ensure the limelight doesn’t dry up with it. The celebrity finding that limelight while enjoying their totally ridiculous stay in rehab will step out of rehab and straight into the white coat themselves because surely a short stay in rehab is qualification enough, right?

Step forward the Shirley MacLaine; if she were a snack, she would be a bag of mixed nuts because she is he nuttiest of the nutty. Yes Shirley MacLaine, that actress you used to see in the moving pictures, now believes she can ‘heal’. This may be true, but only if the philosophy ‘laughter is the best medicine’ because she is hilarious, I assume unintentionally.

Alternative therapies doesn’t have a particularly good name to start with, especially amongst the scientific community, and well, Shirley MacLaine single handed completely destroyed the little reputation they had. Enter a maniacal Shirley MacLaine preaching the virtues of ‘Psychic Surgery’; it sounds ridiculous and it is ridiculous. Psychic surgery, often described as paranormal surgery, involves a surgeon (not really) pressing his hands against the skin of his victim, I mean patient, without making an incision, yet still coming away with some blood or tissue ‘removed’ from the body.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this piece of tissue or blood could be concealed within the ‘surgeon’s’ hand all along and it is probably no surprise that psychic surgery has been denounced worldwide as the worst kind of fraud, preying on the desperation of the seriously ill. But, Shirley MacLaine is no genius, hence she continues to preach the virtues of psychic surgery and other nonsense therapy (stay tuned) to the masses (well anyone that will still listen to her).

Celebrity nut jobs, such as Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, John Travolta and Kelly Preston, have found a religion as crazy as them, L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology (As a science person I actually find it offensive that Scientology almost contains the word science.) I suppose to fully understand I should let you into the story behind scientology (I warn you this isn’t even the craziest part).

According to Scientology doctrine, Xenu is a galactic ruler who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living. These events are known as "Incident II" or "The Wall of Fire," and the traumatic memories associated with them are known as the "R6 implant." The Xenu story prompted the use of the volcano as a Scientology symbol. Don’t worry though, the evil Xenu is now trapped within a mountain somewhere on earth; his hydrogen bombing days are over. It’s like something out of a (bad) science fiction movie; oh wait it already has been made. Battlefield Earth is a bad (very bad) science fiction movie, starring John Travolta. It gets a whopping 2.4 stars out of 10 on the IMDb (Internet Movie Database.) Good for a laugh (for maybe 5 minutes).

It gets even weirder when scientologists make their claims about medicine, so stay tuned for a later entry if you really want a laugh.

Anti-vaccinationist campaigner (and former playmate) Jenny McCarthy has famously claimed to have cured her son of autism, by sheer force of will or something else completely ludicrous. But, she isn’t the only celebrity to ignore the advice of medical professionals and decide that because they know best, they are going to go their own way.

In 1979, Steve McQueen was diagnosed with an aggressive version of lung cancer. Against the advice of his doctors (ah Steve) he travelled to Mexico to guinea pig himself to several controversial and unfounded therapies in a treatment program conceived by an orthodontist (that would be a dentist) blacklisted by the American Cancer association. McQueen was subjected to coffee enemas, injections of animal foetal matter (eurgh) and no celebrity treatment would be complete without some ‘spiritual sessions’.

Throughout Steve’s jaunt to Mexico there were many statements that claimed Steve was doing well and his condition was improving. Steve even released a statement thanking them for helping to save his life. In reality, McQueen was getting worse and he died shortly afterwards, unfortunately this was not before his glowing testimony of his treatment had encouraged a large amount of seriously ill cancer sufferers to follow his example.

On a serious note, it is dangerous to make such sweeping claims without any sort of research and evidence as celebrities (as much as it annoys) have a much greater chance of getting their point across to the masses then a research paper in a reputable medical journal. Like Uncle Ben in Spiderman says: with great power comes great responsibility; so wise up celebrities and be careful with what you claim to be the next miracle, because it’s more likely to be a bill heap of bull plop.

Celebrities are always willing to pitch in with their pinch of salt (so to speak) when it comes to all things dietary. They know it all don’t you know; nutritionists that study and train for years are simply wasting their time. It is celebrities that have all the answers, well that’s what a stint on celebrity big brother or a trip to the celebrity jungle (I use the term celebrity here loosely of course), would have them believe.

Heather Mills claimed that when you eat meat “[It] sits in your colon for 40 years and putrefies, and eventually gives you the illness you die of. And that is a fact.” Well no Heather, actually it isn’t; Meat proteins, like all other proteins, are digested by enzymes, and absorbed in the intestines before they ever reach the colon. Any remaining indigestible matter is mechanically expelled in your faeces in a matter of days. And listen up Heather that information came from a real doctor, gastroenterologist Dr Melita Gordon.

Roger Moore has said: “There are…surveys suggesting that eating foie gras can lead to Alzheimer’s, diabetes and rheu­matoid arthritis. In short, eating foie gras is a tasty way of getting terminally ill.” Roger those are the ramblings of a crazy man and dietician (qualified not self-proclaimed) Lucy Jones will surely set you straight. No single food should be looked at in isolation or attributed to causing any disease or curing one. During digestion our food is broken down into simple components and it is the balance of these components that is important for our health, not the specific food that they come from. Thank you Lucy and take that Roger.

Yes we are back with Shirley MacLaine and her love of something called ‘Radionics’; she wrote a book on it and everything. However, she made herself look even more stupid on an appearance on ‘The View’ when she couldn’t actually explain anything about ‘Radionics’ without looking in her book; so let me explain it for her.

‘Radionics’ makes psycho, I mean psychic surgery look positively conventional. Basically, ‘Radionics’ involves healing someone from afar as long as you have a little part of them, be it blood, hair or something more repulsive. The samples are combined with water and put into machines called Dynamizers and Oscilloclasts (WHAT??). Mumbo jumbo follows and the remote healing begins at another level of reality, where we are all linked with a universal mind. Seems like the deluded ravings of a mental patient, doesn’t it? Well there is more courtesy of cuckoo crazy MacLaine; she claims to have mixed urine (I don’t know if it was hers or not) with toxins, cleansed the fluid with ‘Radionics’ and then drank it. Way to add credibility to your theory Shirley…

Sports personalities are known for using their bodies as opposed to their minds; some form of brain withering must take place as it’s the only explanation for some of the crap that comes out of their mouths, enter Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie and four players from Liverpool FC have had treatment where horse placenta fluid is dripped on their injuries (yes really). Van Persie commented on the use of the treatment for his torn ankle ligaments: “She is vague about her methods but I know she massages you using fluid from a placenta…I am going to try…It cannot hurt and, if it helps, it helps.” Most people would call it a coincidence.

According to someone I would actually listen too, a medical doctor, for recovery from this type of injury one needs to follow a rehabilitation programme, which may include multiple episodes of deep friction massage, one-to-one care and targeted exercise. Any benefits from the placenta treatment would more likely be due to the massage and not the actual fluid. There is no evidence for the efficacy of using placenta extracts to treat torn ligaments

Former tennis champion Annabel Croft and someone I once respected has described the apparent miraculous recovery of her daughter Amber when she suffered severe food poisoning on a trip to Thailand: “I gave her arsenicum album (a derivative of arsenic), which worked very quickly. She went from throwing up all night to dancing at the party.” Wow, we should always give our children arsenic, it’s a miracle drug. Well no, it isn’t at all; the food poisoning is more likely to have cleared up on its own after an intake in fluid.

What is it about celebrities and detox? They claim that their methods of detox make them feel better and healthier and ever. Well, I don’t think their detoxes are working as most of them are still full of crap.

A diet popular Naomi Campbell, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore this year is the ‘Master Cleanse’, where followers survive on maple syrup, lemon and pepper for up to two weeks with nothing else to eat. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Naomi Campbell explained: “it’s good just to clean out your body once in a while.” Well I’m guessing you already know that Naomi is of course talking rubbish. The human body has many or its own natural functions that eliminate substances which would be ‘toxic’ if allowed to accumulate. Most diets have no effect on the rate of these physiological functions and do not improve the quality of ‘cleansing’ in the body.

Don’t fancy two weeks on maple syrup, why don’t you start crumbling charcoal over your food; salt and pepper seasoning is so last year. Sarah Harding, of girl band Girls Aloud recently told a magazine that she sprinkles charcoal over her food “It doesn’t taste of anything and apparently absorbs all the bad, damaging stuff in the body.” Does this make anyone else want to become a celebrity nutritionist; you can make them believe anything and they will throw money at you. Dr John Emsley unsurprisingly refutes Miss Harding’s claims as nonsense. Charcoal is known to absorb toxic molecules when used in gas masks and in sewage treatment. However, it is unnecessary when it comes to diet because the body is already quite capable of removing any ‘bad, damaging stuff’. However, her charcoal seasoning might not be all bad; it can prevent smelly flatulence. Are you trying to cover something up Sarah?

Sharon Stone preciously made some disastrous comments about the earthquake in China that killed nearly 70,000 people and left millions of people homeless.  Stone's opinion was that it was somehow the Chinese people's fault, a result of karma and not in fact the tectonic plates of the earth rubbing together that decades of scientific research has determined causes earthquakes.

She later apologised for her needlessly offensive comments to the Chinese people, but her opinions were so far displaced from reality that the animal rights charity, PETA, offered her a brain scan at their expense:

When she isn’t insulting entire nations, she is making huge overreactions to medical issues, which ultimately caused her to lose custody of her adoptive child, Roan. Court documents outlining Stone's on-going battle with the then husband Phil reveal the actress once wanted Roan to have Botox injections in his feet to resolve a problem he had with foot odour (Roan was just 8 at the time, by the way). It was additionally stated that Stone also alleged "Roan had a spinal condition" whereas "there was no evidence to support this allegation." Stone may have a high IQ, but she also has a few marbles out of the bag.

The Karma Comments

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In Church of Scientology doctrine, there have been a number of controversial medical claims made, usually based on their auditing process, which claims to analyze and treat a person's so-called Thetans i.e. the immortal soul, to free the audited individual from unwanted barriers that inhibit their natural abilities I promise you that isn’t just a random string of made up words they have put together; they really believe this stuff.

Most auditing sessions employ a device called the Hubbard Electropsychometer or E-Meter. The E-meter is believed (by scientologists, no one sane) to aid the auditor in identifying ingrained memories ("engrams", "incidents", and "implants") of past events in a thetan's current life and in previous ones. The also believe that the E-Meter is so sensitive that it can detect a tomato scream when they are sliced. Dinner-time at a Scientologist’s house must be a traumatic experience.

Scientologists have claimed benefits from auditing including improved IQ, improved ability to communicate, enhanced memory and alleviation of dyslexia and attention deficit disorder; however, no scientific studies have verified these claims (what a surprise).

While messing around with an E-meter, torturing tomatoes and the like is fine, but you better not take any aspirin if all the tomato screaming gives you a headache. Aspirin, is claimed by scientologists to "inhibit the ability of the thetan to create mental image pictures" and render the thetan as a result "stupid, blank, forgetful, delusive and irresponsible. He gets into a 'wooden' sort of state, unfeeling, insensitive, unable and definitely not trustworthy, a menace to his fellows actually". In fact, an individual is not allowed to receive any scientology services if they have taken aspirin in the last 24 hours. Several former members of Scientology have reported being ordered to stop taking their prescription medications, and being warned that they would suffer negative consequences if they continued to do so.

There are many more examples of the bizarre views scientology, but I suddenly feel exhausted just contemplating them.