Dr. Oz is no wizard

Dr. Mehmet Oz may have impeccable medical credentials, but in his capacity as talk show host, he’s more entertainer than healthcare provider.

Viewers should remember that.

Oz earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a joint MBA/MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania before launching into a prestigious career as a cardiothoracic surgeon.

These days the doctor only performs surgeries one day a week. His show, on the other hand, is consistently the fourth most popular daytime talk show in the United States.

But episodes of “The Dr. Oz Show” are frequently criticized for citing poorly conducted research and presenting facts and data in misleading ways.

In a discussion of a “miracle pill to burn fat fast,”  Dr. Oz cites a study that was condemned by a staggering proportion of the scientific community.

His own study on the safety of apple juice was called “irresponsible and misleading” by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Richard Besser, another television doctor, accused him of fear mongering.

In his episode on genetically modified organisms, Dr. Oz included Jeffrey Smith, an author and the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, on a panel of experts. At one point he even called Smith a “scientist.”

What he forgot to mention was that Smith, who studied business at the Maharishi International University, has no scientific education whatsoever. Members of the scientific community were outraged, and rightly so.

Maybe Smith’s inclusion was due to the fact that his institute was actively lobbying for the passage of proposition 37 in California, which would have required the mandatory labeling of all GMOs.

Dr. Oz’s wife and executive producer Lisa Oz was involved in similar lobbying campaigns and had contributed to Smith’s work.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t.

Real science is cautious. Scientific breakthroughs don’t break out fully-formed and verified from the moment of conception.

They emerge slowly, piece by piece, gradually convincing enough people they aren’t fantasies. But that process doesn’t make for very good television.

As ludicrous as it may at times be, we should separate the usefulness of a show like Dr. Oz’s from its philistinism.

Dr. Oz does a great service to the community when he forces his audiences to face up to the realities of their health.

This kind of shock and awe tactic, whereby, for instance, you show a morbidly obese woman a gnarled, barely recognizable heart taken from another woman of a similar size, will make people think and change.

Oz obviously has a talent for explaining complex medicine in clear terms.
More importantly, this type of work is based on actual scientific evidence by actual scientists who know actual science.

Not businessmen appointed to direct a lobbying group.

But this habit of dropping the word “miracle” into every other sentence and convincing your viewers that you’ve solved their most serious health problem — at least until 2 p.m. the next weekday — is entertainment on par with wine-throwing housewives, not medicine.

If you need any more convincing, The New Yorker asked Dr. Eric Rose, the man who performed the very first open heart transplant in 1984 and gave Oz one of his first jobs as a member of his transplant team, if he would recommend a patient seek treatment from Dr. Oz.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he eventually replied.

­— drlreed@indiana.edu