Tag: The Dr. Oz Show

Columbia University finally cuts ties with America’s Quack Dr. Oz

Decades after Dr. Oz pioneered "integrating" quackery into medicine and after many years of promoting diet scams and quackery on a nationally syndicated daily television show, Columbia University appears finally to have had enough and has quietly downgraded his status. What took so long?

/ May 2, 2022

TV Doctors Give Unreliable Recommendations

It’s always preferable to have objective empirical evidence to inform an opinion, rather than just subjective impressions. Confirmation bias will make it seem as if the facts support your opinion, even when they don’t. Of course, when objective evidence (such as published studies) does seem to support your position, you still have to keep your critical shields up. Confirmation bias can still...

/ December 24, 2014

Lessons from the dubious rise and inevitable fall of green coffee beans

News this week that a randomized controlled trial of green coffee bean (GCB) has been officially retracted from the medical literature signals what is hopefully the end to one of the most questionable diet products to appear on the market in years. Plucked from obscurity and then subjected to bogus research, it’s now clear that the only people that actually benefited from...

/ October 23, 2014

Dr. Oz and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Dr. Mehmet Oz is one of the most well-known, and possibly the most influential medical doctor in America. The Dr. Oz Show is broadcast in 118 countries and reaches over 3 million viewers in the USA alone. When Oz profiles a product or supplement on his show, sales explode – it’s called “The Dr. Oz Effect”. Regrettably, Oz routinely and consistently gives...

/ June 19, 2014

Forskolin: Here We Go Again

My BMI is 21, but my e-mail and Facebook accounts must think I’m fat. I am constantly bombarded with messages about miracle weight loss solutions, and most of them are diet supplements featured on the Dr. Oz show. Back in December I wrote an article about Garcinia cambogia, Dr. Oz’s “newest, fastest fat buster.” I made this prediction: “I confidently expect another...

/ June 3, 2014

Garcinia Probably Works But Is Far From a Weight Loss Miracle

Women make up a majority of Dr. Oz’s audience. The majority of women would like to lose weight. That is a match made in heaven, a marketer’s dream. And Oz has never hesitated to exploit that fact to increase audience share, playing fast and loose with sensationalized evidence instead of giving his viewers science-based advice. Dr. Oz has promoted a series of...

/ December 24, 2013
iPhone radiation

No, carrying your cell phone in your bra will not cause breast cancer, no matter what Dr. Oz says

Dr. Oz continues promoting quackery, this time fearmongering that cell phone radiation causes breast cancer if a woman keeps her phone in her bra.

/ December 16, 2013

An open letter to Penn & Teller about their appearance on The Dr. Oz Show

  Dear Penn & Teller, I really don’t want to say this, but I feel obligated to. I’m afraid you screwed up. Big time. (Of course, if this weren’t a generally family-friendly blog, where we rarely go beyond PG-13 language, I’d use a term more like one that Penn would use to describe a massive fail, which, as you might guess, also...

/ February 11, 2013

The Dr. Oz Red Palm Oil (non-) Miracle

If there is an antithesis to the principles of science-based medicine, it’s probably the Dr. Oz show. In this daytime television parallel universe, anecdotes are evidence. There are no incremental advances in knowledge — only medical miracles. And every episode neatly offers up three or four takeaway health nuggets that, more often than not, seem to leave the audience more ill-informed about...

/ January 10, 2013

The Great and Powerful Oz versus science and research ethics

Dr. Mehmet Oz conducted a (poor-quality) clinical trial of green coffee beans for weight loss. Somehow between taping his show and being a doctor, he forgot to get institutional review board approval for ethics. Oops!

/ January 4, 2013