He has announced that Dr. Mehmet Oz is changing the direction of his show! No more quackery for him!
The entire upcoming season of The Dr. Oz Show — which kicks off Monday, September 14 — will focus on the mind-body connection and feature a partnership with former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, MD.
In the past, Dr. Oz has come under fire for the advice given on his show. Now, the newly focused program will use medical and other experts whose advice is based in research.
Orac is not impressed. Neither am I. It’ll take a sustained improvement in rigor before I’ll believe it.
Unfortunately, his choice of a topic does not fill me with confidence. I can imagine the frantic meetings to try and hammer out a new direction that has just enough credibility to let them claim they’re being scientific, but still plenty of slop to allow them to continue to pitch snake oil. Green coffee beans don’t have any evidence of medical efficacy, but there’s evidence that if you believe hard enough in green coffee beans they can have a therapeutic effect!
Also, Placebos work!
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This is an image cleanser, nothing more. They don’t mean it and they won’t do it…
Well, the based in research bit is meaningless, because bad or inadequate studies can always be found, you can wave a fistful of studies about, and still base your advice on something else, and so on. Easy enough to get away with, as Ben Goldacre pointed out, because most people don’t know how to correctly interpret a graph, let alone a study.
Then there’s the other experts part. I expect that will cover much of the woo.
Every single form of pseudoscience insists that it’s based in good science and has loads of research. Until it’s up against the wall, that is. Then proponents usually start making the kind of faith-based you-need-to-believe paradigm-shift style apologetic arguments we atheists are all so familiar with. They meant it at the time, but it was only for show.
The term “mind-body connection” is indeed a red flag. It’s a deepity. Sometimes the phrase refers to perfectly reasonable ways of reducing stress or dealing psychologically with things like pain. More often, though, this “connection” is mysterious and occult, representing what Orac rightfully calls the Central Dogma of Alternative Medicine:
“Wishing for healing heals… if you wish for healing hard enough, your mind/spirit/energy can heal you of almost anything.” True but trivial has now merged into extraordinary but false.
People want to believe it. Who can blame them for that? But there’s a good deal of blame to spread around among those who believe it, promote it — and should know better. The fact that Oz is starting out on some sort of apology by heading right into what looks like woo territory doesn’t fill me with any confidence re his making any meaningful changes.
“Mind-body connection” is a wide open avenue for continuing to bring in the woo.
Laughable. But I won’t be laughing.
depends on one’s defn or “therapeutic”.
If anxiety is the issue, then “belief” in the efficacy of the med (even in placebo form) can indeed be therapeutic at relieving the anxiety. If the issue is more physical, such as fever, infection, allergic response, etc, then “belief” has no effect (placebos are controls for that exact effect).
of course, that distinction could provide the “wiggle room” that let’s them avoid accusations of fraudsterism.
Regardless, either way. Oz is off my radar, so whatevah
@1: “This is an image cleanser, nothing more. ”
Is image cleansing like colon cleansing?
This reminds me of a story I saw in the newspaper a number of years ago, about the upcoming annual flying saucer convention. A spokesman was quoted as saying that there were going to be no kooks speaking at the convention that year, only scientists and people who had actually been abducted by aliens.