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from the let-me-sell-you-some-snake-oil dept.
AlterNet reports
[...]the prestigious British Medical Journal has joined [The New Yorker, the US Senate, and the Twittersphere in condemning Mehmet Oz, MD for the pseudoscience on his TV show].
In an article published this week, a group of health experts analyzed a random sampling of episodes of "The Dr. Oz Show" (along with another syndicated show, "The Doctors"). The upshot: the evidence supports less than half of what he says. Which, in practical terms, means you should have reasonable doubt about all of it.
The researchers sat through 40 episodes of the "The Dr. Oz Show"; from those, they identified 479 separate recommendations he or his guests made to his TV audience. After winnowing the selection down to more forceful recommendations, they randomly selected 80 and weighed them against the existing medical literature, evaluating each claim for "consistency and believability."
Only 46 percent of the advice, they found, had evidence supporting it, and just 33 percent of the time were those claims supported by "believable or somewhat believable evidence." For just more than 1 in 3 recommendations, they weren't able to find any supporting information at all (despite, they note, "being quite liberal in the type and amount of evidence we required").
The sad part is how many people get their "information" from television.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @01:27AM
Is this a case of a doctor that is incompetent, speaking outside of his speciality, and/or promoting "controversial" ideas for ratings?
Does he at least get things correct from his speciality correct?
(Score: 2) by NoMaster on Tuesday December 23 2014, @01:54AM
Depends how much shill-money he's getting.
(Or, as Tom Lehrer put it - "A man who's allegiance is ruled by expedience"...)
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Tuesday December 23 2014, @02:27AM
He's a cardiothoracic surgeon by trade. Unless he's talking about cutting open the chest, it's not his specialty.
If you broaden his specialty to all of cardiovascular disease, he's talking nonsense more often than I would feel comfortable in a similar situation (and I'm a cardiologist).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @04:39PM
He was a doctor, now he just plays one on TV.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @02:38AM
Some years back, before talk radio turned into complete shit, there was a guy with a call-in show where he helped folks with medical problems.
His was the #2 syndicated radio show nationally. [wikipedia.org]
He had been an ophthalmologist, but quit practicing.
As a radio doctor, he read voraciously and knew more about the medical field than most doctors.
He had a bunch of other doctors who listened to the show. [examiner.com]
It he didn't know something, he would say so and put out the call for help, often getting that before the hour was up.
On the rare occasion he got something wrong, again, one of the specialists in the audience would call in and straighten him out.
He quit that gig in 2010. [sfgate.com]
(A really horrible, horrible page [w3.org] but it mentions Oz and Gupta.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @04:53AM
So, medical advice from someone not licenced to practice as a GP?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @06:14AM
Hint: Some people have a driver's license but never drive.
I never said he gave up his license.
He just stopped seeing patients.
I'll bet your GP knows less about medicine than the guy who was constantly reading articles about EVERYTHING in the latest medical journals.
Not having to spend 8 hours a day seeing patients gives you a lot of time to learn a bunch of stuff.
Old joke:
Know what they call the guy who finished last in his medical school class?
"Doctor."
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @03:24PM
FTFY
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday December 23 2014, @04:20AM
He actually endorsed, Homoeopathy if I recall correctly. That in my opinion is certainly incompetent, to the point of being criminal.