Roll it in glitter

Jessica Macfarlane (February 1, 2019)

I was very honoured at this year's conference to be awarded the NZ Skeptic of the Year. That honour has made me reflect on what it means to me to be a skeptic and why I decided to jump into the role of tweeter as well as editor.

I've been interested in science and irritated by irrationality for some time, and have been tweeting for a while, so I thought, why not join the two. Something interesting happened over the months I started tweeting skeptical thoughts into the world. My confidence has grown along with my sense of urgency. I was contacted more and more by those interested in what we had to say, some critical, others supportive, some offering to write, others joining up. I connected with skeptics groups worldwide and found a community in the cloud just as passionate about plugging up the flood of pseudoscience that seems to be sweeping up some of our family, friends and neighbours, and washing off the effluent with the disinfectant of kindness and critical thinking.

What a pleasure to talk to people at the conference this year, from all over the world, about all those topics that are normally taboo in polite conversation, and hear their passion to halt a variety of wrongs: physical, emotional and financial.

And this brings me to my topic for today, Pseudoscience.

Hearing people talk about medicine as being ‘full of chemicals', it's like a thousand tiny little cuts to me. Like someone peeling off the protective outer layer of skin representing a positive optimistic and science-based future, to reveal a gruesome zombie-like creature reaching back into the dark smelly past, pre-science, pre-plumbing.

May I present, a major representative of this bullshit, a queen of crap, a believer in bullshit, Gwyneth Paltrow and her empire Goop.

The Goop saga has been happening for some time. First Gwyneth decided to sell some things on the side, and somehow, due to a loyal and growing following her online business has grown into a quarter of a billion-dollar business. Bada bing.

Goop has seen a few embarrassing setbacks lately, but nothing that won't serve to publicize the brand more, and in fact in my view won't dent the support of their fan base much, because if you are buying into the wellness products, the healthy prosperous image she projects is much more powerful than a bunch of skeptics protesting from different sides of the globe. But protest we must, lest the sloppy thinking (apologies for this enema joke) get the best of us all.

So, let's run down the main story points.

Goop was fined a laughable amount of money in a California case for falsely advertising a jade egg. They were saying it was an ancient eastern practice to insert one in one's heaven's door to improve muscle tone. Lies. Not only is there no evidence it helps with the muscles down there, museums housing ancient antiquities were consulted – including Canterbury museum here in Christchurch New Zealand by me, and no such artefact could be found. Note – if you or anyone you know has purchased one, you can apply to the Goop website for a full refund.

Then, publishing house Conde Nast quit as they didn't want to publish false claims, so Goop began publishing in-house.

Goop was forced to remove claims from its website that were misleading. They have now added quite a detailed disclaimer page, with shouty capitals, which advises people not to treat them as medical professionals and to see their own doctors for medical advice. There was a whole thing about employing a fact checking person, and on twitter there was great discussion around what that person would be employed to do given that either a) there were no facts on the website to be checked, and b) if there were non-facts, they would be outside the remit of their job and therefore what they heck was there left for them to do but collect a pay cheque?

Jen Gunter, celebrity gynaecologist and skeptic, soon to publish ‘The Vagina Bible', was nominated to be the fact checker as she has been a constant voice on twitter, picking up on all the bullshit claims made on the website, specifically around the jade egg issue. She was flattered but politely declined.

The Good Thinking Society in the UK reported Goop to the advertising authorities there for 113 breaches. One shocking discovery was a supplement advertised to pregnant women actually contained a harmful (to the fetus) amount of vitamin A.

Finally, Goop is now in talks with NETFLIX to do a show of some sort, and according to Jen Gunter is ‘metastasizing' into London, L.A. and New York. After Tim Caufield's wonderful NETFLIX show ‘Cheating Death', which details various bullshit you should be avoiding, it seems such a shame the same platform is supporting whatever Goopy self-promoting content Gwyneth will be dishing up.

As they say, you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in artisanal organic glitter, and sell it for a small fortune if you have the right branding. And when Gwyneth's goose is laying those special glittery eggs in a town (or on a screen) near you, I hope you'll join me in bringing your metaphorical pooper-scooper.