IS GWYNETH PALTROW WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING?

Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? is the question Caulfield sets out to answer in this fun, factual book that offers real advice.

Over the past few decades, celebrity culture's grip on our society has tightened. For Timothy Caulfield, a health science expert, this culture has a measurable influence on individual life choices and health-care decisions. While acknowledging the pervasiveness of celebrity culture, Caulfield doesn't mock those who enjoy it (in fact he loves celebrity culture.) But with a skeptic's eye and a scientific lens, Caulfield identifies and debunks the messages and promises that flow from the celebrity realm, whether they are about health, diet, beauty, or what is supposed to make us happy. As he did so convincingly in The Cure for Everything, Caulfield separates sense from nonsense and provides useable and evidence-informed advice about what actually works and what is a waste of money and time. In typical Caulfield manner, it isn't enough to just interview experts and read all of the current studies (which he does). He tries celebrity-recommended beauty routines and diets. After attending a modeling competition, he enrolls in an assessment/audition for a modeling agency in Hollywood. He follows celebrity Twitter feeds, reads gossip blogs and forces himself to read every issue – cover to cover – of People Magazine, for an entire year, in his quest to understand the relationship between celebrity culture and our individual health choices. TIMOTHY CAULFIELD is a professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health as well as research director of the Health Law and Science Policy Group at the University of Alberta. In recent years he has led and collaborated on a number of research projects having to do with the social challenges associated with genomic technologies, stem cell research, and the application of ethics in health sciences. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He has also been involved with a number of national and international policy and research ethics committees, including Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, Genome Canada's Science Advisory Committee, and the Federal Panel on Research Ethics.