Gwyneth! How did you learn so much about health?

Gwyneth Paltrow has invented stickers that promote healing. Yes, stickers. Little circular stick-on thingies that you might give to your 1st-grader as a reward for doing her homework.

Gwyneth, though, has discovered something much deeper about stickers. If you make them with just the right materials, and then stick them on your body in the right places, they "rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies."

(A quick warning: if you follow the links in this article, put down your coffee first. You might laugh so hard that you'll spill it all over yourself.)

Until a day or two ago, Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop website–a "lifestyle" business that sells all things Gwyneth–advertised these stickers as using "NASA space suit material," which presumably was the source of their magic healing properties. Then Gizmodo called someone at NASA to check out this claim, and got a very clear answer.

Nope. Goop's stickers are not made of space suit material. (Not that space suit material has healing properties in the first place–it doesn't.) Gizmodo's quote from a former NASA scientist, Mark Shelhamer, sums it up nicely:

“Wow,” Shelhamer told Gizmodo. “What a load of BS this is.”   

Goop quickly updated their site, and now they don't claim anything about NASA space suits in their stickers. But they didn't dial back any of their magical healing claims. Here's what Goop says now, in an article called "Wearable Stickers that Promote Healing (Really!)":

"Human bodies operate at an ideal energetic frequency, but everyday stresses and anxiety can throw off our internal balance, depleting our energy reserves and weakening our immune systems. Body Vibes stickers come pre-programmed to an ideal frequency, allowing them to target imbalances."

Wow. What gobbledygook. I see what that NASA scientist meant. But wait, there's more! Goop tells us:

"Studies have shown that when your frequency slips, your immune system is compromised, which opens the door to getting sick."

Studies? No such studies exist. People don't have a "frequency," and there's nothing to "slip." I think it's fair to say that the Goop claims about these stickers are so ridiculous that they're not even wrong.

These stickers are powerful, though, so you must be careful. Goop warns that

"We recommend starting with 1 or 2 for sensitive people. Wearing more than 4 may cause some dilution of the individual frequencies."

Oh boy.

Paltrow sells these magic stickers (and all of her products) using pictures of beautiful models doing healthy activities while wearing stickers. This is part of Goop's appeal: Paltrow is suggesting, in essence, "I'm beautiful and healthy and I'm in my forties, so I know the medical secrets that will keep you beautiful too."

Of course, the special Goop stickers aren't cheap: they cost $60 for a 10-pack.

Not surprisingly, Goop sells lots of overpriced dietary supplements too, such as a bottle of multivitamins with fish oil for $90, which comes with claims about keeping the immune system strong. Almost no one needs these supplements, and they don't do anything for your immune system, as I've explained before.

It took me just a few seconds to find that you can get a sheet with about 50 "dreams come true" stickers at stickersgalore.com for less than $2. These don't come with any wild health claims, but they do make kids happy. I recommend trying these before you get the Goop stickers.

Goop's (and Gwyneth's) claims about their stickers are so ridiculous, so laughably nutty, that I can't really feel sorry for the people who fall for them. Anyone who can afford to waste $60 for a pack of stickers probably has too much money and not enough sense. It's just too bad that they're giving their money to a wealthy actress rather than donating it to some worthy cause.

Finally, I should note that I've always liked Paltrow as an actress, in movies such as Emma and Shakespeare in Love from the 1990s through the recent Iron Man franchise. But why would her acting skills make her an expert on human health? They don't.

Deepak Chopra's pseudoscience is called out by Jerry Coyne

Deepak Chopra is upset.

Why? Well, it all goes back to statements like this one, from Chopra himself:

“Consciousness may exist in photons, which seem to be the carrier of all information in the universe.”

Chopra is upset that evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne pointed out how absurd this statement is. More specifically, Coyne wrote that:

“[Chopra's] lucrative brand of woo is finally exposed as a lot of scientifically-sounding psychobabble.”

Prof. Coyne’s main topic was another pseudoscientist, Rupert Sheldrake, but he also criticized Chopra, whom he called “Sheldrake’s American counterpart.” As a result, Deepak Chopra is very unhappy, as he makes clear in his very touchy response published last week in the New Republic. I didn’t know Deepak Chopra had such thin skin.

So how did he respond? Well, his entire indignant riposte is essentially a list of his credentials:

“I regularly write articles and books co-authored by full professors … at Harvard,” Chopra protests. 

And he tells us that he is regularly invited to give talks by conferences sponsored by Harvard Medical School, and he’s an Adjunct Professor in the business schools at both Northwestern and Columbia. And more!

With such impressive credentials, how can anything Chopra says can be wrong? But hang on a minute: Jerry Coyne is a Professor at the University of Chicago, and he got his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Harvard, under renowned biologist Richard Lewontin. So he must be right too!

What’s wrong with Chopra’s defense is that it’s a classic argument from authority, a logical fallacy that amounts to little more than saying “I have impressive credentials, so I must be right.” As Coyne explains in his rebuttal at the New Republic,

“Science doesn’t work that way. Scientists don’t defer to authority and credentials. We defer to the quality of one’s arguments and the evidence that backs them up.”

Chopra's claim that photons have consciousness, I have to say, is the purest nonsense. Does Chopra even know what a photon is? (Doubtful: he’s been throwing around the term “quantum” for decades with apparently no understanding of what it means.)  Chopra says this sort of stuff all the time; Coyne also gives us this example:

“The gaia hypothesis says nature does have a mind, that the globe is conscious.”

So both photons and the entire planet are conscious. I can see why Coyne called this psychobabble. If Chopra doesn’t want to be ridiculed, he shouldn’t make ridiculous claims. (He also claims that telepathy is a serious research topic. Right.)

Chopra has become very wealthy spouting this kind of nonsense. His website heavily promotes his line of nutritional supplements, books, videos, and seminars (which he calls “meditation experiences”). He's particularly fond of Ayurvedic supplements, which he claims provide a wide range of vague health benefits. One example: $35 for a 25-ounce bottle of fruit juice called Zrii (or 2 ounces for $4.75). This is little more than modern snake oil.

Visiting Chopra's website is a deep dive into the world of pseudoscience. Jerry Coyne got this one exactly right - which is not surprising, because he went to Harvard.