Tag: Mehmet Oz

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

A closer look at Dr. Oz’s 15 Superfoods

I’m sure I’m not the only health professional that bites their tongue whenever a patient starts a question with “I heard on Dr. Oz that…” More often than not, I have expectations to realign, and some assumptions to correct. I could easily devote all my posts to simply correcting  information presented on the Dr. Oz show. But given I’m blogging here biweekly,...

/ September 26, 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

Are You Ready For the Oz Manifesto

“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. You find the arguments that support your data, and it’s my fact versus your fact.” – Mehmet Oz The above...

/ January 30, 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

Dr. Oz Doubles Down on Green Coffee Bean with a Made-for-TV Clinical Trial

“One of the most important discoveries I believe we’ve made that will help you burn fat – green coffee bean extract” – Dr. Oz, September 10, 2012, Episode “The Fat Burner that Works” Dr. Mehmet Oz may be biggest purveyor of health pseudoscience on television today. How he came to earn this title is a bit baffling, if you look at his...

/ January 3, 2013

Dr. Oz and Green Coffee Beans – More Weight Loss Pseudoscience

I can’t keep up with Dr. Oz. Just when I thought the latest weight loss miracle was raspberry ketone, along comes another weight loss panacea. This time, it’s green coffee beans. Eveyone knows Dr. Oz, now. Formerly a guest on Oprah, he’s got his own show which he’s built into what’s probably the biggest platform for health pseudoscience and medical quackery on...

/ July 5, 2012