Who Is Mayim Bialik? A Terrible Choice for Jeopardy Host.

Bialik hawks nootropics, questions vaccines, and dabbles in warning the pill is dangerous.

Mayim Bialik in 2020Getty

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Yesterday, the producers of the long-running gameshow Jeopardy! announced two new co-hosts to replace the late Alex Trebek: the show’s executive producer, Mike Richards, and actress Mayim Bialik. Richards has his own issues—including being named in a pregnancy discrimination employment lawsuit—but I’ll let others open that can of worms.

Instead, I’ll focus on Bialik. On paper, she seems like a great choice for a show that celebrates the human intellect: Most famous for her starring roles in the TV sitcoms Blossom and The Big Bang Theory, she also has a PhD in neuroscience. Yet despite her scientific bona fides, Bialik has dabbled in realms that are distinctly anti-science. Let’s take a look at her track record.

First, there’s Bialik’s mixed messages on vaccines. Back in 2009, she told People magazine that her family was “non-vaccinating.” In 2012, in a post on the website Kveller, she endorsed anti-vaccine parenting books, including one by Dr. Bob Sears, the California pediatrician who had his medical license revoked for handing out dubious medical exemptions for immunizations. She’s since backtracked on that statement—in 2015, she said in a tweet that her kids were vaccinated. Last year, she released a YouTube video in which she said, cryptically, that she “delayed vaccinations for reasons you don’t necessarily get to know about.” She has publicly endorsed the COVID-19 vaccines, yet she told Yahoo Life in January, “I have a lot of questions about the vaccine industry, as do a lot of people. I have a lot of questions about the profits involved.”

Bialik is also a long-standing proponent of the pseudoscientific field of naturopathy. She has hawked a questionable supplement that claims to enhance brain function, including in an ad that’s on air right now, and in which she leverages her degrees. She’s been featured recently on a naturopathy podcast. In April, on her own podcast, Bialik ran an episode called “Alternative Medicine, Acupuncture & Adrenal Failure—Doulas Do It Right.” In the show, she interviewed midwife Elizabeth Bachner, whose naturopathic clinic in Los Angeles, Gracefull, peddles scientifically unfounded treatments, including IV therapy for anti-aging, oral chelation for heavy metals, and “homeopathic hormone-balancing injections.”

But wait, there’s more: Abundant research shows that birth control pills and devices are safe and effective. Still, Bialik has joined forces with actress Ricki Lake on her crusade against hormonal contraception. Last year, she was a speaker at Lake’s Body Literacy Summit, which warned women about the supposed dangers of the pill. Other presenters included midwife and herbalist Aviva Romm, who has written critically about vaccines. (After this piece was published, Romm told Mother Jones that she does not consider herself a vaccine skeptic and has advocated for COVID-19 vaccines, though she did write a book about alternatives to vaccines.) Bialik also hosted Lake on an episode of her podcast dedicated to criticizing birth control pills.

I could go on. Bialik has worked extensively with La Leche League, an organization that frequently promotes some scientifically dubious practices, including the discredited notion that birth interventions such as IV fluids and epidurals can prevent women from breastfeeding. She’s also written a book about attachment parenting, a child-rearing philosophy that, among other questionable teachings, warns parents that sleep training babies will permanently damage them. And all of this isn’t even to mention Bialik’s weird hypocrisy on feminism: She’s written an empowerment book for teen girls, yet in a 2017 New York Times op-ed, she implied that women invite sexual harassment by dressing immodestly.

It’s incredibly depressing that someone as accomplished as Bialik promotes medical and scientific misinformation. But it’s beyond disappointing that Jeopardy!—a show that is literally about facts—would choose her to be its public face. I’ll take “someone else, please” for $1,000.

This piece has been updated. 

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate