Golf Game Tips Come with Anti-Vaccine, Anti-GMO Propaganda

You don't come to this website for (bad) golf tips. Instead, you come here for our take on the latest scientific and consumer issues of the day. Trust us. It's better that way.

Likewise, people who sign up for golf tips probably aren't looking for bad health advice. Yet, that's exactly what they got -- as well as an unhealthy dose of conspiracy theory -- in a recent newsletter sent out by Golf Game Tips.

Judging by its website, which dispenses golf advice in a free newsletter, its purveyors make money through product placements. That's a perfectly fine business model (if indeed that's what it is); everybody needs to make money somehow. But it becomes a big problem when they peddle false health information and products that are downright dangerous.

Golf Game Tips Come with Anti-Vaccine, Anti-GMO Propaganda

One of the site's recent newsletters began with this whopper:

"This generation may be the first whose life expectancy is shorter than its parents..."

What?! Life expectancy has been increasing steadily for a very long time. In the 1960s, the average American could expect to live about 70 years. Today, it's nearly 79 years. The recent dip in life expectancy is likely due to the surge in opioid-related (i.e., fentanyl) deaths and suicides. But that dip represents just a tiny drop in an overall upward trend in life expectancy.

The rest of the above sentence from Golf Game Tips was just as bad:

"...and GMOs play a big role in this disturbing development."

Oh no. On the contrary, a massive literature review found that GMOs are safe for people and the environment. But it gets worse. Far worse.

Dr. Patrick Gentempo and Jeff Hays have teamed up again. They are the force behind the ground-breaking series Vaccines Revealed.

Patrick Gentempo is a chiropractor and anti-vaxxer. Jeff Hays is a filmmaker and anti-vaxxer. They're both unapologetic conspiracy theorists. Vaccines Revealed features Andrew Wakefield, the doctor whose medical license was revoked because he fraudulently linked vaccines to autism, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is so out of touch with reality that he believes conspiracy theories about the assassination of his uncle.

Anyone who spreads lies about vaccines has blood on their hands. Listening to anti-vaxxers can get you or your loved ones killed. It really is as simple as that. And anti-vaxxers should not be trusted on anything, especially on matters of public health.

A World of Casual Lies

We live in a world where scientific facts are simply matters of opinion. As I've written previously, "[W]hen a society can no longer distinguish truth from lies, that serves as a flashing red warning light that it may be headed toward decline."

The good news is that decline is a choice, which means that we can put society on a better path if we choose to. That might mean, in this case, to get your golf tips from somebody else.