Reviewing "viral" Korean skincare, Choice SPF tests, sci-comm plagiarism

July update

Shorter content

Latest posts on Instagram and TikTok:

• Things I wish more people knew about sunscreen (2 parts) - I decided to compile a whole bunch of sunscreen myths I’ve tackled before! Sources and explanations for these are linked in this new website page.

• Sunscreen doesn’t cause skin cancer, it’s the sun

• More detailed posts below…

Reviewing “viral” Korean skincare

Stylevana approached me to do a sponsored video trying out some products of my choice, so I picked out a bunch of hyped up Korean products.

As well as the very viral Reedle Shot, I also tried a very very nice cleansing balm, a trendy sunscreen, some soothing products, and my husband Omar came on to wax lyrical about his favourite cleanser.

He prefers explosive ingredients in his cleansers, but he also doesn’t like the products exploding? OK.

You can watch the video on YouTube or Nebula.

Choice SPF tests

Recently an Australian consumer magazine Choice tested a whole bunch of sunscreens, and many of them didn’t measure up to the labelled SPFs. What does this mean?

I broke it down in a short video (also on YouTube Shorts and TikTok if you prefer), but it seems like some people misunderstood what I said, so make sure you also check out the Instagram stories highlight / TikTok carousel posts for more details.

I’ll probably film another video to clarify soon, after I recover from a pretty horrific cough…

Sci-comm and plagiarism

I’ve had a lot of conversations with my friend Jen of The Eco Well about how to make independent science communication more sustainable (this was one of the main reasons we started BeautySciComm). We’ve also had a ton of discussions about plagiarism, and how it leads to more misinformation, science communicator burnout.

We finally put all our thoughts together into a couple of carousel posts.

• Part 1, on the importance and work that goes into independent science communication, is here

• Part 2, on how plagiarism fuels misinformation, is here

We’re currently working on Part 3, which will be on science communicator experiences with plagiarism and burnout - if you’re a science communicator with feelings or a specific story to share, please share your thoughts here!

Extra bits

• Mo Skin Lab started a Substack! He’s the best source of consumer-friendly safety information online, in my opinion - unfortunately there are very few toxicologists making easy-to-understand content. I really recommend giving him a follow, and signing up for a paid subscription to help make his content creation more sustainable!

• Videos I enjoyed recently:

  • Angela Collier explores the idea that AI chatbots are a great tool for advancing science

  • Ordinary Things somehow manages to hang out with Bryan Johnson and get him to act out his novel

  • The Eco Well hosted an E-Summit on beauty claims (I lie a bit, I haven’t actually watched this yet but I plan to)

• I updated my reef-safe sunscreen article with my attempts to get the NOAA to update their painfully bad, poorly referenced “Skincare Chemicals and Coral Reefs” page (you can tell it’s bad because no one wants to put their name to it). This page was specifically referenced in the NASEM sunscreen report as an example of misinformation, alongside luminaries like the EWG, Save the Reef and Surfrider Foundation. They replied with… denial, I guess? It’s not a great time to criticise US scientific institutions, I know, but I felt that this bizarre exchange needed documenting.

• To round it off, here’s a fascinating/horrifying article on sunscreen conspiracies in Beauty Matter, which features me but I had no idea where else this article would go!