Goop — Gwyneth Paltrow's snake oil-peddling lifestyle enterprise known for its questionable "health and wellness" claims — is at long last hiring a fact-checker. And, my goodness, it is about bloody time.
SEE ALSO: Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is a hazard to your mental healthIn a profile in the New York Times, Paltrow expressed her, uhhh, lack of enthusiasm for making the hire, which she called a "necessary growing pain."
For the fortunate people not yet acquainted with the site, Goop is perhaps best known for calling on readers to put jade eggs inside their vaginas in the name of sexual empowerment. Side note: never do this. It also instructed readers to use coffee to clean out their colons and to lose weight by not eating.
These claims were made by "the Goop family of doctors and healers" who were allowed to "go unchallenged in their recommendations."
Per the NYT, this proved to be a bone of contention when the site partnered with publisher Condé Nast, which insisted on "traditional backup for scientific claims." Goop's partnership with the publisher was swiftly ended after publishing two issues because it wanted to fact-check articles.
Paltrow "didn’t understand the problem" with making unverified — and potentially harmful — claims about medicine and nutrition. "We’re never making statements," Paltrow proffered by way of explanation. As Taffy Brodesser-Akner — who penned the profile — suggests, Paltrow is pretty much providing an "unfiltered platform to quackery or witchery."
But the time has come, it seems, for Paltrow to make some necessary adjustments. Per the NYT, Paltrow has "hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site," it also hired an editor, a "man with a PhD in nutritional science" and, come September, a full-time fact-checker..
The news of the upcoming hire has caused a few chuckles on social media.
Many expressed their excitement to see what the fact checker will achieve.
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Better late than never?