On occasion, we all have silly ideas. In fact, I think that each one of us holds a great number of silly ideas on an ongoing basis. Fortunately, though, we're not generally asked to air them in public. With luck, it's that other person at the dinner party who makes a fool of him or herself with strongly worded views on what's wrong with society today.

Celebrities, however, are a special case. They are exactly like me and you except for the very unfortunate fact that people ask them about their ideas. Take Gweneth Paltrow's ideas on shampoo for example...she even manages to drop in that staple of woolly thinking, "toxins." Perhaps we shouldn't be too harsh with her though.

Paltrow has managed to anger cancer specialists with her thoughts on modern products like shampoo and incidences of cancer, saying, "Foetuses, infants and toddlers are basically unable to metabolise toxins the way that adults are and we are constantly filling our environments with chemicals that may or may not be safe.
"The research is troubling; the incidence of diseases in children such as asthma, cancer and autism have shot up exponentially and many children we all know and love have been diagnosed with developmental issues like ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)."

Paltrow has managed to get the goat of at least two academics. Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK said, "There has been very little change in the number of childhood cancers detected over the last ten years... There are a lot of scare stories around environmental carcinogens but there is scant evidence to back this up."

Hugh Pennington, professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, said, "It does annoy me when celebrities use their position to spout nonsense. They have a perfect right to their views, even if they are loopy, but they do hold a position of influence."

To be fair to the star, she really is simply vocalising anxieties many people have about modern products like shampoo, as we have no idea what is or isn't in them. With disturbing sounding ingredients like monoethanolamine and methylisothiazolinone, I'm just glad when I read the phrase "with essence of petunia." It may be bad science, and go against what the scientists tell us, but then again we used to believe in what the economists said. That didn't get us very far, did it?