The media is looking for scientists in all the wrong places.

Celebrities are, frequently, looked to as a source of wisdom, their only qualification for advice being the ability to obtain continued employment in the entertainment industry. Women shell out hundreds, if not thousands, for cosmetics and clothing worn by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow; product placement in movies and on television is a multi-million dollar industry.

But while celebrities might be well-placed to instruct on how to dress with an inflated budget and how to stay young forever with the help of expensive creams and plastic surgery, their expertise on matters of biology and climatology might be less reliable. So how do celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and James Cameron gain credibility as influential environmentalists while collecting frequent flier miles and stocking garages with unnecessary vehicles?

The media.

As the Media Research Center pointed out this week, mainstream media outlets often give celebrities the benefit of the doubt, accepting their claims as fact even when the claims are outrageous, ignoring their carbon-emitting lifestyles, and elevating them to an almost-infallible status typically reserved for religious figures (though, to be fair, the left has also taken to elevating religious figures to the status of superheroes when they “get it right” on climate change).

The media should take the MRC’s suggestions: Treat celebrities pontificating on science the way you’d treat a scientist pontificating on hair products, and instead, give the time you’d spend excoriating their greatness to investigating their outrageous ideas.