HAVE YOU heard the one about the bracelet with holograms that can improve your strength and flexibility or help you lose weight?
Did you know that sperm was highly nutritious and something to be reabsorbed into the body, particularly before a fight?
For the past 12 months, a range of celebrities have endorsed and promoted a whole range of scientifically dubious ideas.
Fortunately, for anyone concerned that people might take the celebrity nonsense seriously, scientists and doctors are on hand to dispense some corrective wisdom on the dodgiest of these claims.
The campaign group Sense About Science (SAS) has collated scores of examples of scientific abuse from the past year and yesterday published its annual list of celebrity-science shame.
“When people in the public eye give opinions about causes of disease, cures, diets or products we should buy or avoid, their opinion goes worldwide in seconds,” said Lindsay Hogg, assistant director of SAS.
“It gets public attention and appears in every related Google search for months. So if it’s scientifically wrong, we’re stuck with the fallout from that.”
This year saw the biggest rise in dubious ideas among celebrities about the way our bodies work, said the campaigners. Olivia Newton-John told a newspaper in the summer that she took extra digestive enzymes and “plant tonics” to boost her immune system.
“All the digestive enzymes you need are produced in a beautifully co-ordinated way by different structures in your gut,” said Melita Gordon, consultant gastroenterologist at Royal Liverpool University hospital, England.
“They work best at the exact location where they are produced. Your body makes all the enzymes you need.”
SAS also pointed to several examples of sports stars, actors and even Spanish government ministers endorsing Power Balance, a silicone bracelet that contains a hologram. Footballer David Beckham, Prince William’s fiancee Kate Middleton, actor Robert de Niro and Formula One driver Rubens Barrichello have all made positive noises about the device, according to SAS.
Greg Whyte, a sports scientist at Liverpool John Moores University, said Barrichello’s claim that he felt and performed better when he exercised wearing the bracelet was not surprising.
“Over time, physical training enhances oxygen transport and consumption and increases muscle mass and range of motion,” he said. “Any perceived enhancement to his performance from wearing the Power Balance bracelet is likely to be a placebo effect, as he expects to feel a change.”
British cage fighter Alex Reid took things much further with his tips for health this year. Giving his fans advice on how to prepare for a match, he told a British newspaper: “It’s actually very good for a man to have unprotected sex as long as he doesn’t ejaculate, because I believe that all that semen has a lot of nutrition.”
John Aplin, a reproductive research scientist at the University of Manchester, England, said that sperm could not be reabsorbed once formed in the testes.
“In fact sperm die after a few days and the nutritional content of the ejaculate is really rather small. And it’s worth remembering that unprotected sex might result in pregnancy or the passing on of a sexually transmitted infection.”
The favourite of sceptics everywhere, homeopathy, also makes an appearance.
British actor Julia Sawalha earlier this year said: “I don’t get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad, I take the homeopathic alternative, called ‘nosodes’ and I’m the only one who never goes down with anything.”
Jayne Lawrence, of the UK Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said Sawalha had been fortunate in not getting malaria, as there was no active ingredient in homeopathic treatments that would have protected her.