Self-healing is no stranger to anyone, even celebrities. Here's what they all used in 2012, without helping themselves at all.
"Awesome Talent Judge" Simon Cowell carries miniature oxygen capsules with him, "People from Manhattan" star January Jones prefers dried placenta pills, while British soap star Patsy Palmer rubs coffee granules into her skin.
The annual list of the worst used scientific achievements, compiled by the SAS (Sense About Science) group, also included US presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who asked why the windows on the plane were not opened when a fire broke out. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps made the list for explaining why peeing in the pool is okay.
SAS has therefore called on scientists to respond to these pseudoscientific claims that the rich and famous keep making.
To Romney, who wondered aloud in September why the plane's crew didn't just open the windows when a fire broke out in the aircraft, engineer Jacob Whitfield says, "Unfortunately for Mita, opening the windows at altitude wouldn't help anything. If you open the window in flight, all the air would escape." outside because the air moves from the pressurized cabin to the lower pressure outside, which would mean more damage and injury."
The dried placenta in pills, which Jones has been using since giving birth, did not impress the chief nutritionist at St George's Hospital in London, Catherine Collins.
"You will not get anything nutritious by eating the placenta - whether it is raw, cooked or dried. In addition to iron, which can easily be found in other foods, the placenta has toxins and other indigestible substances that it keeps so that they do not reach the baby in the womb," says Collins. .
Pharmacist Gary Moss warned Palmer that caffeine has an effect on cellulite, but that rubbing coffee granules into the skin will not work because the caffeine cannot "escape" from the granules and get under the skin.
Phelps' claim that it was acceptable to pee in the pool because "chlorine kills" urine did not meet with the approval of biochemist Stuart Jones, who reminded the swimmer that "urine is essentially sterile, so there is nothing to kill".
For Cowell's "bugs," Kay Mitchell, a scientist at the Center for Science and Medicine, warns that high levels of oxygen can be toxic, especially in the lungs where it is most abundant.
"Celebrity comments travel far and fast, and that's why it's important that what they say makes sense," warns SAS.
"Incredible and dangerous advice about how to avoid cancer, improve skin quality or lose weight is increasingly unethical, and unfortunately more trusted than science, evidence and research".
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