Celebrities: Idiots

In its annual report, the British public interest group Sense about Science have run down the top anti-scientific, non-evidence-based statements made by famous people in 2008, and we're presented with the regular offenders.  Chief among them is Oprah, queen of the emotionally confused, who jumped aboard the "natural" "detox" diet craze that's sweeping through everyone too busy to actually research facts.  The nonsensical idea of "chemical free" food is cited as the most popular anti-scientific idea of the year (everything we eat contains some sort of chemical, be it naturally occurring or synthetic, and the synthetic ones are often safer than the others).  But the anti-vaccination crowd gets its fair share of celebrity exposure.  In addition to die-hard nutjobs like professional breast owner Jenny McCarthy, even Barack Obama and Jon McCain engaged in a little campaign trail pandering by suggesting that there might be something to the whole vaccines/autism connection, despite the fact that there's no evidence vaccines cause autism, so there's really no connection.  Actress Amanda Peet is praised for her defense of reason in calling those who refuse to vaccinate their children "parasites", but there's no way her star power will ever eclipse Oprah's.  Oprah commands armies, while Peet was in the new X-Files movie.  What, you didn't see the new X-Files movie?  Neither did America.  More details here.