Celebrities must get scientific advice before joining campaigns

This is what senior officials in the field of science education in Britain claim, who distributed the leaflet among agencies representing celebrities * When in Israel?

UK celebrities are asked to check the facts before offering support for scientific research or campaigns and not to risk misleading the public. Several campaigns supported by celebrities have caused damage to the public, including the link between the triple vaccine against mumps and rubella and autism. A British group called charity Sense About Science. The group published a list of statements made by movie and television stars about topics such as organic food, pesticides and ways to avoid cancer. The list also includes the opinions of the scientists regarding the scientific validity of the arguments.
The list appears in the following link

 Among the celebrities whose quotes appear in the Herald are Madonna (who claimed that one of the Kabbalah experts who influence her was able to clean a lake in the Chernobyl area of ​​radioactive radiation), the nude chef Jimmy Oliver who made emotional arguments in favor of using natural food products, and the former model Heather Mills-McCartney (whose ex-wife of) who claimed that drinking excessive milk during childhood causes obesity and that the milk producers are preventing the change of the popular perception that milk is healthy for children. The answers were - for Oliver: there is no natural food, everything we eat is the result of controlled reproduction for ten thousand years and for McCartney - the milk It is one of the most nutritious foods, and those who remove milk from the menu may be depriving the body of essential substances.

Another statement that receives criticism is that of the actress Joanna Lumley: "We cannot continue to destroy the animals with chemicals and growth accelerators in the way we are doing today. Why do you think the incidence of cancer is skyrocketing these days?"
Prof. John Toy, the medical director of the UK Cancer Research Center answers her and says that the cancer incidence is not "jumping". "The disease is more common mainly because people are living longer. It is important to understand that claims about cancer causes should be based only on scientifically proven facts, and not on scaremongering. There is no proven evidence that the controlled nutritional supplements cause cancer. We know that half of the cancers are caused by lifestyle-related phenomena such as being overweight." In a separate interview with the BBC, Toye said that "celebrities usually have a real influence on forming public opinion on certain issues, especially in the area of ​​health and lifestyle" he said. And he added that: "Because of this, they have a responsibility to update themselves with the correct information before making statements praising the properties of products in order not to mislead the public unintentionally."

The list was distributed to VIP clubs and restaurants across the UK, as well as management agencies and publishers. The list includes advice such as: "If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is." The association also published a phone number that celebrities can call if they want to discuss any topic with the experts in the field.

 And what about us? You are invited to take advantage of the comments platform to mention cases where celebrities joined a campaign whose scientific basis was wrong. Meanwhile, the case I remember is that of Odette. On April 10, Anat Balint reports in the Haaretz newspaper that the management of Channel 10 has forbidden Odette Schwartz to continue engaging in her program on attention disorders and administering the drug Ritalin. The directive was received following the publication in "Haaretz", according to which Odette claimed in her program that Ritalin is a dangerous drug and that attention disorders do not actually exist - the claims of clients from the letters of Scientology, which is waging a war against psychiatry in general and against the administration of Ritalin in particular. "