Mehmet Oz

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Doctor Oz at ServiceNation 2008, 12 Sep 2008.

Mehmet Oz is a TV doctor who first became known from his appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show between 2004 and 2009. He currently hosts his own syndicated television talk show, "The Dr. Oz Show" which first aired on September 14, 2009.

Oz is a heavy promoter of so-called complementary alternative medicine, such as rolfing and acupuncture.[1] He's hardly seen a piece of medical woo he didn't like. He has also featured anti-GMO activists on his program.[2]

The general format of the Dr. Oz television show is to invite many people who work in healthcare for the audience, go through some very logical points with real medical background and consensus, having members of the audience participate, then ruin it by trying to peddle some alternative medicine garbage.

Contents

[edit] Background

As a doctor, Oz is actually one of the most accomplished cardiothoracic surgeons of his generation,[3] making his woo-peddling all the more disconcerting. He has advocated doing whatever is necessary to keep a blood pressure no more than 115/75, five points below the normally accepted 120/80, which at least is something that's actually in his area of professional competence.

[edit] The Dr. Oz Show

Like all commercial TV programming, the purpose of the Dr. Oz Show is at least as much entertainment as medicine. Attempting to fill up nearly 5 hours of programming time each week with legitimate medicine while retaining a captive viewing audience is nearly impossible, particularly for a show that is constantly trumpeting new scientific "break-throughs" and "miracles," which in real life are nearly non-existent. Hence, Dr. Oz fills his time with all sorts of material from the dubious to the downright fraudulent. In the past he has given time to such quacks as Joseph Mercola. Oz generally stops short of endorsing these charlatans, but the fact a legitimate doctor gives them a platform at all borders on malfeasance. It also gives these medical frauds to promote themselves with "as seen on the Dr. Oz Show."

[edit] Criticism

Medicine is a very religious experience. I have my religion and you have yours. It becomes difficult for us to agree on what we think works, since so much of it is in the eye of the beholder. Data is rarely clean.
The New Yorker, 2/4/13, [4]

[edit] Resveratrol

One of his biggest controversies involved the chemical resveratrol. While pharmaceutical research on laboratory mice showed it had some potential as an anti-aging agent, Dr. Oz went one step further by promoting it as some New Age miracle, and pushing his own supplemental version of the chemical, despite a current lack of proof of its benefits/risks for humans.[5]

[edit] John Edward

John Edward once appeared on the Dr. Oz show, where he did what he always does, and claimed to talk with the dead while really doing a cold reading with members of the studio audience. At no point in the episode did Dr. Oz question whether Edward could really talk to dead people.

[edit] Reparative therapy

In November 2012, Oz provided a perfect example of false balance by giving a platform to "both sides" of the "debate" about reparative therapy. In reality, there is no debate: reparative therapy is utterly discredited and those who still promote it are a bunch of homophobic whacknuts. A very small bunch of homophobic whacknuts. As a result, gay rights groups ripped him a new one.[6]

[edit] Pigasus Award

Dr Oz won the James Randi Educational Foundation's Pigasus Award (Media section) in 2010 and 2011 for doing "such a disservice to his TV viewers by promoting quack medical practices that he is now the first person to win a Pigasus two years in a row."[7] He also won in the Refusal to Face Reality section in 2013.[8]

[edit] Footnotes

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