Confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon where things that we agree with are considered true simply because they confirm our already established ideas. It’s the opposite of cognitive dissonance, where we simply ignore or refuse to accept things that we disagree with. Both concepts are dangerous traps, often times because we don’t recognise them as factors. Things that we agree with are normal, things we don’t agree with are weird.
Which is why, when I saw a headline from the NY Post which read, “Gen Z Women are Choosing Older Men Over Guys Their Own Age—and It’s Not Because They’re Sugar Daddies”, I suspected that the only reason I was going to click on this link was because the article would tell me something that I wanted to believe.
Let me caveat this: I have been married for 16 years and have no personal interest in this story. It is not about my dating or romantic preferences. Hi, honey! My motivation is more schadenfreude – I want to be happy at other people’s misery. Not just any other person, but the people that have essentially tanked my country in the last 100 days. It’s not a noble motivation, but it’s there and I feel compelled to be honest.
The headline references a somewhat sexist stereotype that younger women would only prefer to date older men for resources and security. The “hook” of the article is that this tired stereotype isn’t actually the reason that Gen Z (defined as women in their 20s) are pursuing men a generation older (30-40) – it argues that it’s not about money, but rather if they dial that birth year back so that it begins with a “19” rather than a “20” the man is less likely to have been sucked into the Rogan/Tate/Petersen worldview.
In other words, these women are more likely to find someone who doesn’t despise them because they’re women.
This headline caught my eye because, in the United States, things seem very bleak. If you know an American, understand that our despair is not just because we have a president who seems to decide policy on whims, a feckless legislature branch unwilling to stop him, and a judicial system that lacks teeth. That would be bad enough, but there is an older generation that cheers all of his actions on, despite having pretended former president Obama was acting like a tyrant because he wanted to break the filibuster rule. Even that is bad enough, but it’s also being cheered on by a younger crowd who believe in some platonic ideal of masculinity that is hyper-competitive and can be “won.” If you’re an American and even vaguely liberal, it seems like you are in enemy territory. This headline told me that while they may be numerous, they are being rejected by the women that they pursue.
It makes me think of the Lysistrata, Aristophanes’ play where the women of Athens and Sparta withhold sex from the men until they end the Peloponnesian war. I support this entirely and wish I could do something more. Why should these women “reward” the type of male who has voted to remove their rights, who views them as less equal, and thinks of them only as a collection of parts.
So, it’s confirmation bias, the article tells me something I want to hear, but as a good skeptic I can’t just swallow this. I must check on it… and one look at the source made me very skeptical. The NY Post – despite being created by an original founder of my country (and terrific rapper), Alexander Hamilton – is now a tabloid. My suspicion was that this article was some clickbait, possibly generated by AI, and would end up trying to sell me a membership to a dating site. The Post article was dated 18 April 2025 and it references an article in the Independent from the 16th. The two articles are so similar that the authors should be sharing credit. They both follow the same structure, both reference the HBO series “White Lotus,” and both have an internet user making a comment that Walton Goggins’ older character probably doesn’t listen to Joe Rogan.
I also discovered an article on Medium, which has the same first six paragraphs, but then ends with a three-paragraph warning that sometimes age-gap relationships also have a power imbalance. Publishing on Medium requires nothing more than an account, so a cut/paste job here isn’t surprising. Like “The Skeptic”, the other two sources have editors to approve stories and help with writing, such as adding an unnecessary “u” to words like “color” and “flavor.”
Let’s investigate… image via Andres Siimon on Unsplash
The story got stranger when I found a link to the same story on LinkedIn, dated the same as the first Independent article. I was surprised when I clicked on the link, because it let me know that I had a LinkedIn account I don’t remember signing up for. It was also the same article as the other two. This fourth version of the story followed the same pattern as the others, but lacked the wordy summary of the White Lotus, or the list of Spring-Summer celebrity romances.
Having been fooled by James Vanderper, I decided to contact ‘James Aaron Brown Dr. Strategic Leadership’ (this is how his name appeared on the LinkedIn profile), expecting nothing. Based on that title, there was no way this was a real person. All I wanted was the justification for the percentage of women dating older men because of their socio-political views. I actually didn’t want this. I wanted to see what would happen if I asked. As an academic I love talking about my research, it’s a thing that we like to do. Asking a specific question like this would either get no response, or it would get the information I wanted.
However, James Aaron Brown Dr. Strategic Leadership, did respond. He thanked me for my email and interest in his writing and provided a list of sources. There were two problems with the list: the first was that no research appeared, not even a link to the alleged Bumble survey. The second problem was that the list of links was a series of articles that told me the younger generation doesn’t view age differences as that important, there is a divide in Americans as women gravitate more to the left while men are basically running to the right, resulting in men having trouble finding dates, and then a Buzzfeed article. Also included as a source was the NY Post article published two days after his LinkedIn version.
At this point, I felt like the James Aaron Brown Dr. Strategic Leadership was a sock puppet using AI to generate articles. I found a James Aaron Brown, a business instructor at National University. National University (NU) is an online only university with a regional accreditation from the WASC. I took this at face value, because trying to understand the accreditation process sent me to a strange, alien, and incomprehensible land. I emailed him again, and then I emailed the writers of the Independent and NY Post.
Brown responded again and, surprisingly, he admitted that the article was AI generated, that he was irresponsible in posting it, and that he was going to pull it down. He did, as well as deleting his LinkedIn profile, which I thought was extreme (between drafts the profile has returned). Something about this whole thing seemed odd, and I don’t like making assumptions. His Instagram link on his email signature went nowhere, a podcast he hosted stopped making episodes in 2023, even his faculty page for the college that employs him has very little actual information other than the most generic business buzzwords.
At the end of all this, my conclusion is the same as my initial suspicion: this was an AI-generated article that appealed to an existing bias. I don’t want to say that I should know better, because I did know better and I still clicked on it. As my cynicism grows, I am starting to view every headline that has some good news in it as dubious. I clicked on this link because I wanted to believe it and because I knew that it was probably bollocks. To repeat from the beginning: the headline makes sense since, in America, conservatism is more extreme and contains a current of hetero-normative patriarchal misogyny. Women, as a population, are becoming more liberal and are turned off by this social movement. This would compel them to seek out populations more amenable to their views – whether that’s an older generation isn’t guaranteed.
The article attempts to capitalise on the popularity of this White Lotus show and two “age-gapped” characters getting together at the end. I’m not one to criticise a pop-culture tie-in to make a point; that’s fine, but the article must succeed in making the point. This article fails in that regard. As I’ve written a few times before, and any honest skeptic will also say, skepticism is hard, and it’s even harder when we have to turn it toward something that we want to believe.
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People tend to have misconceptions about what is involved in being a journalist. We have this notion that journalists are the tenacious tellers of truths, speaking truth to power. Lois Lane. Their job is to take to their newspapers and tell people what all the bad guys have been doing, and how they know.
That’s the impression we typically get from the fiction we consume – journalism is about individuals, the personalities who dig deep, right wrongs, then tell you all about it. But it’s not really how journalism works. It’s not even how it works when it’s working the way it should, because journalism isn’t really meant to be about the voice and personality of the journalist, it’s meant to be about the unvarnished truth.
If anything, when you know too much about the personality of the journalist, that can start to put varnish on that truth. Well, Lois Lane would say that Lex Luthor’s businesses are dodgy, she’s sleeping with Superman, the guy who has taken a completely irrational dislike to poor Mr Luthor. Not content with blasting Lex with his laser eyes, now Superman has set his attack dog on him in the press.
The fact that Lex Luthor is guilty, and his businesses are objectively dodgy, can’t rest on Lois Lane’s say-so, it has to be painstakingly presented with the evidence. Here are the blueprints for a series of orbital satellites, designed and manufactured by corporations owned by Mr Luthor. Here is the transcript of an intercepted phone call, in which Mr Luthor outlines his plans to use said satellites to control the world. Here is the receipt for one Kryptonite Warsuit, signed by L Luthor. If Lois Lane has all of that evidence, there’s never a point where she has to say “Lex Luthor is a bad guy who should be in prison”, because the evidence speaks for itself.
Real investigative journalism takes serious work. Photo by Krišjānis Kazaks on Unsplash
In fact, if Lois Lane wants those articles outlining the guilt of Lex Luthor to be taken as seriously as possible, she needs to make sure she doesn’t then use them to advocate for a particular punishment. Leave the calls for his imprisonment to the opinion pages and the editor’s column; this is journalism, not advocacy.
That’s the lofty ideal of objective journalism, to lay out what is true and expose what is unknown in a way that isn’t personal and doesn’t call for specific action. News articles shouldn’t ever include the journalist telling you what they think, and they should never use “I” as a pronoun. As far as you’re concerned as a reader, it should be hard to tell there even is a journalist there at all – the words should feel like they’ve occurred spontaneously.
That’s not the case with feature pieces, of course, which might include some first-person perspective. Magazine pieces also have more leeway – with The Skeptic, for example, the standard is for an objective presentation unless there’s cause to deviate from that. Ideally, articles should be from this hypothetical (though in practice unreachable) external viewpoint, above it all and outside of it all.
Tell me but without telling me
That’s obviously not to say that journalists don’t have specific perspective, and it’s not to say they can’t indicate what kind of opinion the reader should take from what they’re presenting, or what action should be taken as a result. It’s just not really for the reporter to express that – and that’s where the expert voice comes in.
In almost any news story longer than a couple of paragraphs, you’ll typically find a quote from someone. It is the basis of the Fourth Paragraph Law of Bad PR – if there is a quote around the fourth paragraph of a news story, and that person has a commercial interest, there’s a good chance they’re from the company who provided the story.
That’s not always a bad thing; I’ve been that spokesperson, many times. When there is a story in the Times about some dodgy cancer product for sale on Amazon and you see a quote from me in there, it’s often because I’m the one who found that product for sale on Amazon and flagged it to the Times. When there were articles about how much money the NHS was spending on homeopathy, you’d see a quote from me in there as the person who figured that out and told the newspapers about it.
Then there are the cases where I wasn’t the person responsible for the story – maybe someone at the Telegraph actually did check eBay and find Miracle Mineral Supplement for sale. That’s obviously bad, and eBay should stop doing that. eBay should even update their policies and police their site better, so people can’t upload and sell dangerous fake cures like that. The people selling it should be investigated and perhaps even charged under laws designed to protect people from dangerous substances. But, there is that journalistic ideal where, as the uncoverer of truth, a journalist can’t then call for action to be taken by authorities and for eBay to change their processes. So how do you reflect those aims and opinions in your article?
First, you might put those points to eBay as questions to respond to:
‘Dear Mr eBay, do you think your customers should be sold industrial bleach under the guise of a supplement, and if not, what do you intend to do about it?’
‘Dear Ms eBay, do these listings reflect the standards of your site, and what your customers should come to expect?’
Get the right response to those questions, and you can publish them as a direct quote, with your question hidden, for example: “Emma Zon, the spokesperson for Amazon, said, ‘These listings do not reflect the standards of Amazon, and will be removed immediately. Customers should be sure to check that what they’re buying isn’t potentially dangerous.’” Hey presto, your call to action is in the story, without you as a journalist having to say it yourself.
The problem with that approach is that spokespeople are often smart, and they’ll rarely give you the quote that you want. They’ll say something that best suits the needs of their company and that can mean not answering at all, or it could mean giving a self-serving answer that deflects criticism. That’s where external stakeholders are handy. Someone’s selling something that claims to cure autism? ‘Bob Citation of the British Autism Society warned customers not to fall for fake cures, and called on eBay to do better for their customers.’ A cancer claim being made for something completely ineffective and dangerous? ‘Caroline Spokeperson from British Cancer Researchers said the police need to crack down on those who prey on the sick and the vulnerable.’
While the journalist never actually said for themselves what they think of those products or what they think should happen, it’s very clear – they’ve sought out quotes from organisations whose positions are self-evident, and they’ve provided lines that align with what the journalist wanted, coincidentally enough. There’s nothing nefarious here, it’s just good story building – you go to the stakeholder likely to give you the perspective your readers will want to hear. Then, when you speak to them, you might ask them prompt questions to direct them towards particular bits of the story to react to. “And what do you think eBay should do about it? … And what action do you think could be taken to stop this?”. That’s how I end up fielding calls on stories I didn’t originate.
That’s all well and good, of course; that’s the best side of things. But it’s not the only way that these kinds of interested party quotes end up in the newspapers. Some are added for balance or perspective.
Take, for example, a story about someone who has decided to treat her breast cancer with herbal remedies and Gerson therapy. One such article appeared in the Mirror in 2015. In that article, obviously there was going to be lots of quotations from the patient herself – she’s sharing her story, telling her truth. But in order to run a story like that, you have to provide some degree of cover.
So, you interview a cancer expert who tells you that this is a bad idea. You run a 2,000 word article praising Kelly for taking control of her health, but as long as the last 80 words are from a cancer charity telling people not to try this, you as a journalist for a national newspaper can feel great, because you showed both sides of things. It doesn’t matter that the readers won’t read right to the end, and even if they do they’ll ignore 5% of the article because it disagrees with the other 95%.
Those are the bad ways to use quotes in newspapers, as a way figleafing over the fact that you as a journalist are telling a sensationalist and irresponsible story, but it’s OK because you included views from an expert.
Then there’s the other type of expert quote – the one who has nothing to do with the story, but has been drafted in to give the story gravitas and credibility it would otherwise lack. These are the kinds of stories I used to cover quite a lot in the Bad PR field. You’d get a psychologist like Geoffrey Beattie, who would crop up in PR stories like the one saying that scientists had discovered the formula for the perfect handshake… and it was an advert for Chevrolet (whose used-car sales team were so friendly, they’d even studied how to put you at ease with a handshake).
Maybe it’s Bad PR
Back in 2015, I gave talks about this model of expertise in the media, and how it commercialised and commodified science at the hands of the PR industry. I concluded that commercial pressures on the journalism industry have weakened the ability to accurately report science reliably, and reliance on the PR industry cannot fill the gaps. But when scientists lend their voice to PR stories, they cheapen their reputation and the reputation of science, because the public cannot be expected to distinguish real science from PR stories disguised as science.
That was a decade ago. Things have not improved since – budgets have tightened and journalism has felt even more of a squeeze, from multiple directions. It’s far harder to turn to your address book to find that expert voice that you want. But almost all stories require a quote to round them out and, if you’re writing half a dozen stories per day, you’re going to be up against it. You might not even have the time to pick up the phone and call a team that specialises in finding relevant experts. You probably don’t even have time to go onto social media and put out a #JournoRequest.
So, where do you turn? Well, you might turn to a service like Response Source.
Response Source is a service that connects journalists to PR companies. PR companies sign up and pay to be part of the platform, while journalists sign up for free. Journalists can put out an enquiry for a quotation, spokesperson, expert, background information or product review, and they can explain what they need and how soon. That enquiry will then be sent out to any PR company who signed up for those chosen categories, who can then see if they have an expert that can fit the bill. If they do, they can get in touch via Response Source – the journalist gets their expert and the PR company gets their expert placed in the press, carrying whatever brand name they’re promoting along the way.
It’s not, on the face of it, a terrible system. But, as with everything in 2025, it is one that is hugely open to abuse and in ways we’re not quite ready to cope with.
Are they Superman?
This was made very clear in an investigation from Rob Waugh at the Press Gazette recently, who looked into some of the current prolific expert commentators in news articles. Waugh cites the consumer features editor of The Sun, Laura Purkess, whose requests on Response Source for expert comments reliably get responses from a particular PR agency, who provide three or more written comments on almost any subject, within an hour of the request going out.
Which is exceptionally fast, given that it supposes that a PR company has received and read the email, contacted their list of experts, found three willing to comment, had those three write and check their comments, sign them off, collate them, and send them back to the journalist. And it’s somewhat suspicious, given that the PR representative who responds doesn’t have a surname or an agency name.
Press Gazette feature the case of one expert called Rebecca Leigh. She put herself forward after a journalist put out a call for insight on the environmental impact of avocados, and offered an in-depth comment on the carbon footprint of the fruit. In the past, she has provided comments to journalists on employee benefits, budgeting, business degrees and music streaming. She has been quoted in Fortune talking about “loud budgeting” and by Business.com talking about the best countries in which to obtain a business education. She has written for DrBicuspid.com about how to write a business plan for your dental practice.
Rebecca’s profile on a site called Academized said she was a science educator with 12 years of experience and a biochemist with a background in molecular biology and biotechnology. It has her picture on there; the same picture also appears on a website called Leaddev… where she is called Sara Sparrow.
According to Academized, there’s nothing sinister about this – they use fake names and fake images for real writers to preserve their anonymity. But it obviously invites the question, if the name and the photo are fake… is the expertise real? Does whoever Rebecca or Sara really is actually have that expertise in biotechnology and molecular biology? And, if so, why is she spending her time writing about dental practices and business education?
Press Gazette covers an even more high-profile case, of the therapist and psychologist Barbara Santini. Barbara has an MSci in Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics from the University of Oxford, and has offered comments and interviews on everything from friendship in old age to astral projection to being ‘ghosted’ by friends. Her comments have appeared in national and international publications including Vogue, Metro, Cosmopolitan, The i Paper, the Express, Hello, Shape, Women’s Health, Yahoo, Good Housekeeping, the Telegraph, the Daily Star, the Daily Mail and the Sun. Press Gazette explains that, in terms of media mentions, Santini is likely one of the most prominent psychologists in the UK.
Yet she doesn’t have her own website, social media, or LinkedIn. If you google her, you’ll find she has an about.me page, where she’s described as:
a freelance writer and a sex and relationships adviser at several companies. Barbara is involved in various educational initiatives aimed at making sex advice more accessible to everyone and breaking stigmas around sex across various cultural communities. In her spare time, Barbara enjoys trawling through vintage markets in Brick Lane, exploring new places, painting and reading.
That site does have a link that reads “Visit my Website”, but when you click it, you go to her profile on Peaches and Screams, a sex toy website she apparently works with. There, she is:
a fabulously quirky freelance writer and sex and relationships adviser at Peaches and Screams, where she’s on a mission to make sex advice as accessible as a good cup of tea and to shatter taboos across all cultural corners. When she’s not busy revolutionizing the way we talk about sex, Barbara’s diving into her delightfully eccentric hobbies. She floats her way through yoga classes (yes, on water!), hunts down the most fabulous vintage fashion finds, and loves cracking the codes in escape rooms. Right now, she’s having a blast transforming her newly acquired grand Victorian house into a whimsical wonderland, obsessively scouring Facebook Marketplace for the perfect reclaimed tiles, doors, and fireplaces to add that touch of vintage charm.
When Press Gazette tried to speak to Santini, they were told that she couldn’t talk over the phone, but she was willing to message via WhatsApp, where she refused to answer any questions about her credentials… but she did threaten to sue Press Gazette if they ran a story questioning whether she was real or not, saying
I am an accredited consultant for Peaches and Screams and my credentials and professional affiliations are a matter of record. Should you proceed with this article, my solicitors will initiate immediate legal action for defamation, including claims for damages arising from reputational harm. Further, your conduct may constitute harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, and any misuse of personal data to advance false claims will be treated as a breach of GDPR. Cease all communication with me directly. Any further correspondence must be directed to my solicitors, who should be contacting you sooner.
Press Gazette printed the story and, as yet, have heard nothing from any lawyers. Since the story went out, Santini’s name has been removed from articles in the Guardian, Mirror, Sun, and BBC, but she remains quoted in many, many more.
Santini might just be the most prominent example of a quoted expert of questionable existence, but she’s by no means alone. And the machine is being fed from both sides – PR companies use these request services to match their product up with an expert where they don’t have an existing relationship. George Driscoll, PR manager for the fintech app Remitly said he wanted an expert who would provide comments on food trends, and received an offer from a pastry chef who had a recipe blog. When he tried to verify who they were, there was no social media – despite them apparently being a prominent online food chef. They had a phone number, which, when added to WhatsApp, showed the photo of the man who ran SEO for the recipe website.
Let’s investigate
As an editor and quasi-journalist, I was intrigued by how this world worked. So, I inevitably joined Response Source and made a request of my own.
I explained, I am an online editor looking for an expert to talk about digital manipulation, how digital tools facilitate the spread of misinformation online, and how readers can be manipulated by falsehoods. I prompted for comments on how has the landscape changed over the last five years, and what do readers need to look out for when it comes to spotting fakery online.
I submitted that request at 4.40pm, and at 4.51pm I got a response, from someone simply called Star, at a company called fatjoe, who had already reached out to “tech expert” Joe Davies, who provided:
Have you ever clicked ‘share’ on a shocking headline, only to discover it was completely fabricated?
Digital misinformation has evolved from crude hoaxes to algorithm amplified deepfakes, making critical literacy your first and best defense against falsehoods online… While platforms have rolled out fact check labels and takedown policies, enforcement remains inconsistent, and sophisticated forgeries still slip through automated filters… Misinformation today is engineered for virality, not for truth. By sharpening your digital skepticism and adopting simple verification steps, you can inoculate yourself and your network against the next wave of online fakery.
In just 11 minutes, Star had apparently seen my request, sent it to Joe, caught him at the right time for him to see it, and he’d written a response of 186 words that he was happy with, sent it back to Star, who sent it back to me. It’s an impressively quick turnaround.
Joe is real enough, I found him on YouTube doing an interview for a podcast called SEO For Hire. He runs fatjoe, a “content marketing and SEO agency that stays at the forefront of digital trends”. Joe had also tweeted, six hours before my request: “Google is a librarian, AI is a journalist” and spent all day talking about how LLMs are important for AI SEO. It certainly seems like Joe ‘wrote’ that 186 word quote within 11 minutes of my request via AI.
12 minutes later, 23 minutes after my request, I had another response, this time from someone called Jen, of Liberty PR and Marketing, offering me “a few examples of the kinds of advice” Naomi Owusu, the CEO of Tickaroo, could tell me about. Her advice included:
Ask who gains from a story and be skeptical – this can help you confirm the validity of your sources. For example, if a story on the incredible effects of rhubarb references a study that the Rhubarb Farmer Association of America commissioned, the findings in that study may need to be examined more thoroughly. Did another independent study also find these findings? Has the study been peer-reviewed?
Those are the kinds of thoughts that might hypothetically have been given to me by Naomi Owusu, the CEO of Tickaroo. 40 minutes later, Jorden of GWI, the consumer insights platform, sent me a list of the top four most-trusted news sources in the UK, which had TV news at 44% and national newspapers at 22%. They offered to put me in touch with one of their data experts, Chris Beer or Matt Smith. I declined.
I’m not saying that Chris Beer, Matt Smith, Naomi Owusu aren’t experts in this area – I’ve honestly no idea, and that’s not really the point. Joe Davies may be an expert in using AI to boost the SEO of companies, but that’s obviously not really the kind of expertise I was looking for. And to be clear, I’m certainly not saying Chris Beer, Matt Smith, or Naomi Owusu don’t exist. I have no information either way, and this story isn’t about checking that.
What is clear is that we’ve got a media ecosystem built around the requirement of quotes and expert voices to carry authenticity and round out a story and we’ve simultaneously built a system that accelerates that whole process, while removing the time and resources and training journalists might need to check whether their expert even exists, let alone whether they are qualified and relevant. Whether this good or bad, or what we do about it – as any good journalist, I leave it to the reader to make up their mind.
What’s your morning routine? For me, I brush my teeth, wash, put my contact lenses in, and I might put on a face cream with SPF. But for some social media influencers, it goes a lot further – they engage in the ‘morning shed’.
Confusingly enough, the morning shed actually starts the previous night, with a nighttime routine – it might mean putting your hair into some sort of heatless curl contraption and putting on a face mask or under-eye mask to wear overnight, meaning there are things to remove when you wake up. Hence the morning ‘shed’ of your overnight treatments or styling devices before you start the day.
I’m not going to criticise women for doing things overnight that make them feel a bit more like themselves in the morning, or that save them time when they’re getting ready the next day. However, I do worry how it might affect people’s sleep and sleep position, if they’re angled into particular directions because of additional products in their hair or on their faces.
It’s probably no surprise that some of these overnight treatments include things that aren’t evidence based. Many of the morning shed videos I’ve watched start with the influencer removing their mouth tape – a practice used by people who hope it will stop them snoring, but that can actually be quite dangerous (especially when the tape is covering the whole mouth), and at best is just plain pointless.
But the thing oddest thing I’ve seen frequently referenced in the morning shed is the removal of a castor oil pack, either as a large fabric pad tied to the belly or a smaller sticky patch worn directly over the belly button. According to Healthline, a castor oil pack is a piece of wool or a cloth soaked in castor oil that you can apply on the skin, which people use in the belief it can combat “skin conditions, blood circulation problems, and digestive issues.” What’s more, according to Women’s Health: “many people are turning to castor oil to help get rid of unwanted belly fat and to tone the stomach area.”
Users go even further with their claims, this with Instagram influencer Millie Mae explaining:
WHAT DOES THIS DO?
The natural compounds in castor oil help to stimulate the lymphatic system, reduce inflammation, and support detoxification processes in the body.
If you experience hormonal acne (especially around your period & ovulation), this is often due to the liver struggling to detoxify excess hormones & toxins, castor oil supports the liver, to improve this!! Castor oil packs are incredible at reducing period cramping too!!
There are even claims that castor oil packs will improve fertility with another Instagram user claiming:
Elevate your fertility journey naturally with castor oil packs! 🌺 Dive into these 5 game-changing benefits:
1. Bid farewell to cysts and fibroids, 2. Boost ovarian function, 3. Break through fallopian tubal blockages, 4. Tackle inflammation head-on 5. Regulate your menstrual cycle for smoother sailing towards conception!
Embrace the power of castor oil packs and unlock your path to parenthood!
Even if I weren’t already skeptical of these products, the sheer number of conditions they’re claimed to treat is enough to set my alarm bells ringing. As a general rule, the more conditions a product claims to treat, the less likely it can treat anything at all – especially if there are lots of unrelated health complaints, or very generic claims.
What actually are castor oil packs? Healthline explains that to make a homemade castor oil pack, you cut wool or cotton flannel into rectangular pieces of around 12 inches by 10 inches, soak one pieces in castor oil, lay it on a plastic sheet and soak further pieces, piling them onto each other. That’s essentially it. Although, from the videos that I’ve seen, people seem more likely to purchase pre-made packs, rather than making their own.
Once you have your oil-soaked cotton, you simply press it against the area to be treated. According to Healthline:
For example, for constipation or other digestive problems, you’ll likely place it over your stomach area.
Some people believe that the key is to apply castor oil to the belly button – hence the smaller, stick on belly button patches. This version is sometimes called navel pulling, or navel oiling, and traditionally involved massaging oil into the belly button to help with weight loss as well as detoxification, lymphatic draining and improved digestion.
The practice is derived from Ayurveda – traditional Indian holistic medicine – which promotes the belief that the belly button contains 72,000 veins and a non-existent gland called the Pechoti gland. None of this is true; the belly button is just a remnant of where we attach to the placenta in the womb. Once the umbilical cord is cut, the belly button is formed from the wound. There are some veins there, from the umbilical cord, but nowhere near 72,000 of them.
So why do people think castor oil has magical, near-panacea qualities? Some users simply say it’s because castor oil is great for all things – Google it, you’ll see plenty of claims. But some go further, and try to explain what’s so special about castor oil. According to some, it’s all about the ricinoleic acid present in castor oil. Castor oil is made from the castor plant’s seeds, and around 90% of the fatty acid content of these seeds is ricinoleic acid. As one paper explains:
Castor oil is unique among other vegetable extracts due to containing a hydroxylated fatty compound, namely ricinoleic acid
This compound is particularly sought after, by (according to the review) the “pharmaceutical, oleochemical, cosmetic, medicine, biodegradable polymers, lubricants, coatings, adhesives, and nanoparticle synthesis capping agent industries, respectively”. And that’s for good reason – it is useful because it is chemically quite flexible; it can be synthesised into lots of different compounds, many of which are useful for the manufacturing of a variety of products.
Castor oil is also used in the beauty industry as an emollient, and in the food industry as a mould inhibitor. It is even used in medicine, but typically its used as a vehicle for fat soluble medications such as hormone treatments.
To the lavatories… Photo by Hafidz Alifuddin, via Pexels
Castor oil is also an excellent laxative. This is something that has been known for thousands of years, with an early mention in a papyrus from 1550 BCE. It was used to treat pain in labour according to an 18th Century midwifery manual, but it’s fair to say it was probably the laudanum it was supplemented with that actually did all the work.
The laxative effect of castor oil might explain why people think it’s an effective treatment for digestion and weight loss. However, the laxative effect is obviously only present when the oil is taken orally, not when it’s slathered on the belly or massaged into the belly button. Also, there are now far better treatments for constipation than castor oil. The laxative effect of castor oil, particularly in high doses, can cause diarrhoea so explosive that castor oil has historically been used as a punishment or for torture and humiliation, including most famously under Mussolini in fascist Italy. And that’s before you take into account that the castor seed is the source of the deadly toxin, ricin.
While applying castor oil to your skin is unlikely to cause deadly levels of explosive diarrhoea, and is probably relatively safe for most people, that doesn’t mean it has no side effects when applied topically. Topical castor oil, especially when applied in a concentrated form, can cause skin irritation and allergic reactions.
Topical castor oil may improve the skin due to the emollient effect, for the most part there is no evidence applying castor oil packs will do anything at all. And of course, when we’re loading our skin with oil overnight, there is an increased risk of acne – especially if packs aren’t washed as frequently as they should be or are used too many times.
But are there any benefits to using castor oil packs?
Science supports the idea that reducing stress levels is important for whole health, due to stress hormones that can be released like cortisol and adrenaline which have downstream effects on parts of the body and hormone levels… Therefore I would not be surprised if a relaxing activity such as navel pulling helped to reduce stress levels as part of a holistic approach to wellness, and in turn have a positive effect on your overall wellbeing.
Notably, she’s talking specifically about navel pulling – laying back and massaging your belly button, which may well be quite relaxing. The same can’t quite be said for applying a oil-soaked cotton pack before bed, and then removing it in the morning.
Some ‘morning shed’ influencers may well talk about how relaxing and empowering it is to spend some time in the evening doing something for yourself – applying masks and treatments, hair curlers and castor oil packs, and then undoing those treatments step by step the next morning. And perhaps the ritual of that could allow for some quiet reflection, some time to yourself away from the doom scrolling.
But I can’t help but think that if you spend a significant portion of your evening and your morning preparing for ways to make yourself more attractive, to make yourself thinner than you are, to correct your imperfections and enhance yourself, rather than empowering yourself, you’re spending time, money, and mental effort just to be aesthetically acceptable to the world.
While some people might well think that these sorts of practices are just self-involved navel gazing, I actually think they’re a symptom of a societal insecurity, and this need to self-improve every single part of ourselves – perpetuating the toxicity that led us into this unhealthy mentality in the first place.
This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 4, from 1991.
The 110th anniversary of any journal is notable; particularly one which has espoused or pioneered causes while remaining free from advertising interests and organisations. Considering the large number of well-financed and long-established periodicals which have gone under in recent years, The Freethinker’s unbroken publication since 1881 (for most of its history as a weekly) is all the more remarkable. It has survived bans, boycotts, legal action, innumerable financial crises and two world wars (its offices were destroyed during an air raid in 1941).
Although The Freethinker dates from 1881, the origins of freethought publishing (‘the infidel press’) can be traced to the middle of the eighteenth century, when Peter Annet (1693-1769) started the The Free Inquirer. Regarded as the first freethought journal, rather than a pamphlet, it ran for nine issues, resulting in Annet being fined, pilloried and imprisoned for a year at the age of 68.
Throughout the nineteenth century the freethought press operated in defiance of the Church and State. Blasphemy was linked with sedition by prosecuting authorities who argued that an attack on Christianity was an attack on civil government. This did not worry freethinking editors and publishers who regarded religion as superstitious nonsense and a bulwark of rotten politics.
However, it was not only the representatives of law and order who threatened pioneers of freethought publishing. Many Christian organisations, like their present-day counterparts, endeavoured to impose their narrow standards on society and constantly pressured the authorities to take action against ‘the infidels’. There were many victims of these pious informers and self-appointed censors. One of them was Richard Carlisle (1790-1843), who spent nine years in jail for publishing and selling the works of Thomas Paine. During three decades that followed the collapse of Chartism at the end of the 1840s, freethought journals did much to keep the spirit of radicalism alive. They provided an outlet for the advocates of social and political reform and a forum to debate advanced ideas. By 1881, when The Freethinker was launched, scepticism and unbelief were no longer confined to an educated elite.
George William Foote (1850-1915), who founded The Freethinker, declared in his first editorial:
Our principles belong entirely to the regions known and becoming known to man. We have no occult or mysterious sources of information. no profound secrets… No Gods, angels, spirits or devils have ever spoken to us… Satan is as great a stranger as Pluto; Jehovah as empty a name as Jupiter. The separate existence of the ‘soul’ and the ‘future life’ are to us inconceivable… For us the ‘verities’ of Christianity are all fables.
This was strong stuff for Victorian England, and Foote soon discovered that his religious and political enemies were as vindictive as their predecessors who had persecuted Richard Carlisle. Newsagents refused or were afraid to stock The Freethinker. Its suppression was demanded in the House of Commons.
It was not long before The Freethinker was in trouble. Foote published a series of Comic Bible Sketches somewhat disrespectful, but which would not now cause Mary Whitehouse to bat an eyelid. He was tried for blasphemy and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment, most of which was spent in solitary confinement. On his release he resumed and continued his editorship until his death.
Readers of the first Freethinker were informed that it would ‘wage relentless war against superstition in general and against Christian superstition in particular’. But The Freethinker never confined itself to criticism of religious beliefs and practices. It championed personal freedom, most controversially people’s freedom to control their fertility and plan their families by recourse to effective methods of contraception. This infuriated religious opponents, fearful in case the supply of pew fodder became less plentiful and – horror of horrors – people might indulge in pleasurable sexual activity without fear of unwanted pregnancy.
The Freethinker has always been resolute in defending freedom of expression and in opposing censorship. It has argued the case of Church disestablishment, the right to affirm, and reform of laws relating to blasphemy, school religion, Sunday observance, divorce, abortion and homosexuality.
Spookies have often been in The Freethinker’s range of fire. In 1919, Foote’s successor, Chapman Cohen (1868-1954) wrote:
The present recrudescence of Spiritualism is largely caused by the heavy death-toll of the Great War. There is a quite natural desire among the bereaved to seek consolation through almost any channel…The money the ‘medium’ rakes in is the flow of tears from the sorrowful and distressed, and is one of the shadiest of shady businesses.
At one time The Freethinker was virtually a lone voice speaking out against religious charlatans, and also sects like the Moonies, Divine Light Mission, Children of God and the Jesus Army. The paper was accused of intolerance, but its warnings have been justified by subsequent investigations and court cases.
Is there a role for journals like The Freethinker today? The upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with attendant aberrations like creationism, moving statues, ‘anti-satanist’ witch-hunts and other manifestations of irrationalism, provide an answer to that question.
The protocol adopted seems, at first glance, quite reasonable: a few dozen people who are considered – by their social groups at least – to be “mediums” were selected, and their DNA was compared to that of close relatives in the hope of finding genetic variations that were common to the mediums but absent in the relatives. Those variations, after an extra round of “validation” (in which the genes of the mediums tested against the relatives were compared to those of a second group of mediums), can then be presented by the study as candidates for a supposed genetic basis of “mediumship”.
This apparent reasonableness, however, hides a series of highly problematic implicit assumptions. The selection of participants for the experiment could have been based on a purely objective criterion, instead of resorting to a selection based on personal beliefs and social validation.
Typically, social recognition of someone as a medium, and the perception that their extraordinary communications are accurate, depends on vague, subjective claims. Psychological phenomena that produce the illusion of exceptional or supernatural access to facts and knowledge, such as cold reading, subjective validation, cryptomnesia, and the Forer Effect, are well known and documented in the scientific literature – but the possibility that they are responsible for the participants’ apparent “mediumship” was ignored by the study’s authors.
Any phenomenon that interacts with nature, even if it is not fully understood, can be tested. To date, no good controlled experiment has shown that any human being has extrasensory perception or access to the consciousness of dead people. In the case of this study, participants were selected based on a criterion that in no way proves or offers evidence of any extraordinary powers or abilities they might have.
There was no need, therefore, to dedicate half of a journalistic text to taking the reader through a paranormal narrative. It would be more appropriate to approach the subject as a manifestation of religious and cultural beliefs, or as a result of psychological factors – which, of course, offer simpler and more well-founded explanations than any genetic cause. Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate (plurality should not be posited without necessity) – a principle known as “Ockham’s Razor”, which states that, broadly speaking, if there are several hypotheses that can explain the same phenomenon, it is more likely that the simplest one is correct.
It should be part of the journalistic repertoire not to report highly speculative and incipient research. At the very least, a well-trained journalist should be able to distinguish between legitimate areas of research, in which pilot studies (less rigorous work, conducted to capture the first signs of a possible phenomenon) are followed by rigorous confirmatory studies, and fields that merely produce an abundance of pilot studies with no rigorous follow up. These latter fields often rely on this plethora of uncontrolled pilot studies to generate headlines and keep the funding taps open.
The coverage in FSP even cites Aldous Huxley, by way of suggesting that mediums may have a less restrictive filter of reality – this is essentially Tooth Fairy science; studying the characteristics and details of a phenomenon before ever actually establishing whether it exists.
What’s the going Tooth Fairy rate these days? Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
One could measure the amount of money the Tooth Fairy left under your pillow, analyse whether the payout is higher for the first or last tooth, or compare whether the reward is higher for a tooth wrapped in plastic or in tissue paper. You could even collect data from several children to get a reasonable statistic about the fairy’s behaviour and personal preferences. None of that data would alter the crucial fact that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist – and there’s a much more plausible explanation for your experimental results.
In the case of this mediumship study, the plausible explanation is that the genetic variations found do not differ considerably from what would be expected in random mutations that arise when comparing genomes of close relatives. Inferring a cause-and-effect relationship from this is a gigantic leap, even more so when the “effect” is a social phenomenon. It makes as much sense as comparing the genomes of two brothers, one a fan of one football team, his brother a fan of their rival, and attributing the difference in teams to their genetic variations.
To complicate matters further, close family members share a significant portion of their genetic material, and by analysing genomes (in the specific case of this study, exomes, which are an important part of the genome) as if they were independent, there is a risk of misinterpreting normal genetic variations within the family as significant (the authors thank Dr Luiz Gustavo de Almeida for explanations on genetics).
Although the authors state, in the article in the Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry, that there is no conflict of interest, it is possible to find a postgraduate course in Integration of Spirituality in Clinical Practice where one of the researchers appears as the main figure in the course’s marketing – whose registration and classes, with a discount, total R$11,530 (£1,500).
It is also worth highlighting the growing journalistic interest in spirituality. One day after the publication of the article on mediumship – even before the final version was available in the newspaper – the same FSP published an article praising one of the authors, in which we read: “there is already sufficient scientific data to affirm the presence of spiritual experiences in the world”. Quo vadis, journalism?
The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020.
I was looking on social media for videos about sustainable fashion and content discussing how to avoid cheaply made garments with short lifespans, and the value of opting instead for classic pieces that endure beyond trend cycles. I was then quickly funnelled towards videos of women telling me how to dress modestly and classically, emulating the look of classic, Gatsby-esque ‘old money’. I’m not ashamed to admit I let them draw me in a bit. Very attractive people strolling around European cities in well-fitting, muted shades has a real aspirational charm.
It got me thinking about changes I’ve made to my own wardrobe. I noticed that I’ve been favouring more neutral colours and thinking about my clothes in terms of timelessness. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been a victim of the same value system without realising, perhaps subtly guided by the same predatory algorithm into believing that what my summer wardrobe really needed was a smart shirt, implying it’s somehow inherently better than, say, a T-shirt.
The Old Money trend has had a considerably longer life cycle than other styles precisely because it feels aspirational in a time of economic uncertainty. In such periods, minimalism feels safer, less risky. Experimentation with personal style becomes less common as people try to present the most palatable version of themselves to avoid social or professional rejection.
The old money aesthetic draws on the style associated with generational wealth, reflecting an understated, elite look. Typical features include tailored garments such as blazers, trousers, and trench coats; neutral, classic colour palettes like navy, black, beige, and grey; luxury fabrics like cashmere, wool, silk, and linen; and subtle logos, or none at all. In a similar vein, I also found videos promoting Quiet Luxury pieces, promoting minimalism, refinement, and the subtle signalling of wealth through quality and design.
Conservatism thrives on the belief that answers lie in the past rather than the future; on nostalgia, and how the trends we follow in clothing reflect broader cultural values. While I’m not suggesting that choosing to dress up and favouring a quiet luxury style makes one inherently conservative, embracing traditional aesthetics can be one step on the ladder. These styles are conservative by definition: they aim to preserve an idealised past that may never have existed.
It would be easy to say I’m overthinking a fashion trend, but what is more conservative than aspiring to traditionalism? Reflecting critically on how trends shape us is essential to being aware of their influence.
Absorbing conservative messaging
Although these videos appear designed to a conservative aesthetic and agenda, I discovered them while researching sustainability practices. This shows that different viewpoints can independently reach similar conclusions about the value of timeless clothing — something worth recognising and understanding.
The feeling that I might have been inadvertently absorbing conservative messaging left me feeling quite disjointed. After sitting with the feeling I realised the significant difference, even when the outcomes appear the same, between avoiding cheaply and unethically produced items and fearing the appearance of something looking cheap. For conservatives promoting the old money style, it doesn’t matter whether something is expensive or sustainably produced, as long as it appears elegant, understated, or expensive, at least from a distance or in a short clip.
Without close inspection, the two can appear almost identical, making it easy to slip from ethical concerns about clothing into the belief that modern styles are inherently cheap, unsophisticated, or brash.
The predatory aspect here is something that I kept coming up against after engaging with the old money aesthetic videos. At a time when economic mobility is increasingly out of reach for most young people, cosplaying wealth has become more and more popular. That is what so much of this aesthetic feels like to me, a yearning for a lifestyle that no longer exists in the same way, or at least for the aspirations once attached to it: home ownership, being the sole breadwinner, having ample disposable time. These now feel incredibly out of reach in our economy, because we live in a late capitalist nightmare where almost everyone has to work a lot harder.
Other trends that romanticise the past, like the trad wife movement, also sell a version of time that people associate with stability or a life of leisure. And the thing is, it works; it is appealing in those ways, but only if you squint and don’t think about it too hard.
And in myself, in the current climate, I’ve been experiencing anxiety about the future – as I think we all have, especially young people. I turned twenty-two last week, and I’m worried about my job and property-ownership prospects, along with most in my cohort. But it is those exact anxieties that they are preying on, trying to lead us into the mindset that ‘the old ways are the best’. But dressing like the fifth Roy sibling from Succession won’t make you a homeowner or exempt you from work, and it’s predatory for these conservative creators to try and sell you on that idea. It’s likely pushing people down the alt-right pipeline.
The rise of Cringe
All these preferences rely on having a direct opposite, an implied enemy, which I would say is the appearance of doing ‘too much’ or ‘trying too hard’. I have seen the term ‘cringe’ crop up time and time again in videos promoting classic, timeless fashion. It’s usually used in the context of comparing “cringe” versus “classy”, contrasting the supposed second-hand embarrassment or disgust you feel when looking at modern styles like baggy clothes, streetwear, punk-type looks, or dressed-down styles, with the relaxed, timeless, secure feeling of ‘high-class’ tailoring.
‘Cringe’ as an adjective has risen in popularity over the last ten years, and I would confidently classify it as a conservative trait, reinforcing conservative beliefs that ‘less is more’. The behaviours or individuals that frequently get called cringe online tend to be people considered different, those putting themselves out there, trying something new in an unconventional manner. Cringe culture, as it exists online, is at its core the mockery of the unconventional, and what is more conservative than that? Calling things cringe may not seem harmful, but it reflects and stokes an attitude that dislikes change, innovation, experimentation, and creativity.
Ultimately, conservatives’ only real joke about liberals has people with blue hair in the punchline. Said supposed joke usually also includes adjacent jabs about piercings, tattoos, eyeliner, etc. Underneath that well-flogged dead horse is the disgust they feel toward people freely expressing themselves beyond the mould. There is a belief of many conservatives, I’ve found, that they are the blueprint. I mean, many say they are the silent majority, and any innovation or growth is unnatural and transgressive.
As well as a rejection of what is over-the-top, there is also a rejection of what is different. But also, classism is baked into every aspect of this preservationist mindset, with a tendency to look down on those who cannot afford to dress more sophisticatedly. Another inherent, antithetical villain of quiet luxury is being seen as cheap.
Coffee in the sunshine. Photo by Rosa Rafael on Unsplash
A lot of modern conservatism, more so in the US, is focused on building personal wealth and centring one’s close family unit. There is something very individualistic, or if benevolent, done within a very narrow scope. This, I feel, ties into that – the idealisation and the aspiring to the landed gentry levels of generational wealth that it takes to truly carry off the old money look requires a fixated level of ambition and truly buying into the idea of entrepreneurship and personal growth, pursued within the capitalist system rather than against it.
That’s again very conservative, aiming to win the predatory game of chance rather than improving it to be fairer. The fear of looking cheap, also baked into this style, is then not looking like you’ve earned that money, like you were born at the top rather than working your way up.
What you will also see in all content surrounding the old money aesthetic, like the “clean girl” before it, is only thin, able-bodied and conventionally attractive white people. As with nearly everything else promoted and embraced by young conservatives, exclusion is essential to the look. The prominence of these figures in this aspirational trend reflects an idealised, exclusionary past, echoing the logic of white supremacist ideologies that promote a purified and homogeneous vision of society. This is ultimately where this was all leading; this trend is all the other things I’ve discussed, but at the end of the day, it really is just a stand-in for white supremacy.
Aesthetic conservatism is linked with political conservatism, particularly through the lens of “nostalgia politics”. The old money look being pushed on social media subtly reinforces traditional hierarchies tied to race, class, and gender. This becomes particularly visible when such aesthetics are used to mock or devalue contemporary styles associated with marginalised groups, such as streetwear, queer fashion, or alternative subcultures, being branded as “cringe” or “low status”.
Framing the old money aesthetic as a cultural soft-power tool for conservative values is therefore not an exaggeration. The end goal, I feel, is yet another method of exclusionary and classist recruitment tactics by the right, targeted primarily at fashion-conscious young people anxious about their future while trying to discover their identity through clothing.
