Physicist takes apart a goop lab episode

February 21, 2020 • 2:45 pm

Here we have Professor Philip Moriarty, a physicist at the University of Nottingham, taking apart one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop lab segments that appears to be about reiki “healing”. Dr. Phil simply vets the statements in the goop Netflix episode and, as the segment proceeds, gets angrier and angrier as he watches the statements on goop get dumber and dumber.  Moriarty is egged on by the guy behind the camera, apparently named Brady, who tries to play the devil’s advocate. Phil reminds me a lot of Sean Connery as James Bond, complete with Scottish accent.

This is part of the University of Nottingham’s Sixty Symbols Project, which makes videos about science (YouTube site is here). Here are some YouTube notes:

Moriarty watched episode 5 of the goop lab, which focuses on energy.  The goop lab on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80244690

More videos with Phil: http://bit.ly/Prof_Moriarty He wrote a blog about the goop lab — https://muircheartblog.wordpress.com/…

It’s great to see a physicist taking Gwynnie and her nonsense to pieces. Reiki, which purports to heal you by manipulating your body’s energy, even by waving hands over your body and not touching it, is a pile of horse manure.

29 thoughts on “Physicist takes apart a goop lab episode”

  3. “Dr. Phil” — think that sobriquet’s been used up by Oprah’s PSY majordomo and ought be retired, like the jersey number for a NY Yankee Hall-of-Famer.

  5. a common and useful measurement of human energy is the EKG. The wave forms reflect the myocardium’s electrical depolarization characteristics.
    Years ago while working in a neonatal ICU, I noted one electrode on an infant had fallen off, and the electrical recording was “flat-line” on the very alive little girl. I put the electrode on my wrist, and nothing happened. I then held her foot with the opposite hand, and her (not my) electrical recording came back on the monitor.
    Since this was kind of cool, several of us held hands in a little line, with the person at one end holding the infant’s foot, while the one at the opposite end affixed to her loose electrode. Her myocardial depolarization conducted successfully across the line, despite interference from our electric fields.
    I am not really sure what this proved, except that we had no influence on an ill infant’s myocardial depolarization despite outweighing her over 100 times.

    1. Great story!

      With a little tweaking you can probably sell such a machine to goop as a Give-Your-Baby-Your-Own-Unique-Energy kit.

      Instructions:
      Attach leads A, B, C…to Baby. See most lines on the screen jump into life. Now take the last lead in your hand and grasp hold of baby’s toe. Watch that line spring into action. That’s YOU pumping energy into your infant.

  7. Probably about 47% of the US population believe that stuff. The same number as like tRump. A lot of overlap too.

  8. New Age beliefs like “Energy Medicine” is where curiosity goes to die.

    I have friends who are staunch believers in this sort of thing, and yet none of them are interested in having well-designed scientific tests of claims which are eminently testable. None of them care about what this “energy” is or how it works if it means doing anything more strenuous or rigorous than speculation. None of them think the “energy healers” or, worse, “energy scientists” ought to care, either. They’ve “tested” it to their own satisfaction and don’t have to prove anything to their colleagues. Because that’s how science works: no curiosity.

    What goop.

    2. In ancient times, people used to talk explain things by invoking gods, sprits, or magic. Today, new-agers talk about energy — another catch-all phrase that explains everything and nothing. If a non-scientist starts jabbering about some kind of non-specific energy that isn’t on the electromagnetic spectrum, then he or she is probably talking bunk.

      1. “If a non-scientist starts jabbering about some kind of non-specific energy that isn’t on the electromagnetic spectrum, then he or she is probably talking bunk.”

        Not necessarily. For example, there are safety procedures (e.g lock-out/tag-out) that deal with (safeguards to prevent unintentional release of) non-specific energy that isn’t necessarily on the electromagnetic spectrum. To give a few specific examples covered by the general, non-specific principles, that includes mechanical, chemical, nuclear, and thermal energy.

        1. Oh, that’s true I guess. But I don’t think the crowd at Goop would ever get into that kind of detail. They just talk about a vague kind of energy without any measurable properties.

  9. Howdy,

    Apologies if this is already known,
    Brady Haran, “the guy behind the camera” is also responsible for the video posted several days ago about Darwin from the Youtube channel Objectivity. The man hangs out with the Head librarian of the Royal Institute. How cool is THAT!

    Brady, a former BBC journalist, has to be one of the most prolific educational youtubers ever (17 channels: 10 current) His most popular channel is I think, Periodic table of videos, produces with Sir Martyn Poliakoff. But he produces Numberphile, and numerous astronomy videos and the famous podcast “Hello Internet”.

    Any one looking to take a deep dive into the internet and loose time itself could worse than follow Brady.

    Cheers,
    Scott

    1. I saw a candle that can become part of the Internet of Things the other day. Are any of those up with that?

      (Yes, this is a candle that you can light remotely!!)

    1. Fear not. Brady Haran has always been a very good interviewer, which here means playing devil’s advocate.

    2. He does a pretty good job by playing devil’s advocate. For example, Moriarty is standing next to a machine which he claims can visualise and manipulate atoms. Brady forces him to explain why his claim is different to the woo merchant’s claim on the Goop Lab.

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