{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/media-center/latest-headlines/half-of-dr-ozs-medical-advice-is-baseless-or-wrong-study-says", "Half of Dr. Oz’s medical advice is baseless or wrong, study says", "2014-12-19", "2014", "2014-12", "Democrat", "House", "MO", "Claire McCaskill", "M001170", "www.mccaskill.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Half of Dr. Oz\u2019s medical advice is baseless or wrong, study says \r\n                \r\n            \r\n            \r\n                Friday, December 19, 2014\r\n            \r\n            \n\t\n\r\n            \r\n            \r\n                  \r\n                    By:\u00a0\r\n                    Terrence McCoy\r\n                \r\n            \r\n            \r\n                \r\n                \r\n                \r\n            It\u2019s not hard to understand what makes Dr. Oz so popular. Called\u00a0\u201cAmerica\u2019s doctor,\u201d syndicated talk-show host Mehmet Oz speaks in a way\u00a0anyone can understand. Medicine may be\u00a0complex. But with\u00a0Dr. Oz, clad in scrubs and crooning to millions of viewers about \u201cmiracles\u201d and \u201crevolutionary\u201d breakthroughs, it\u2019s often\u00a0not. He somehow makes it fun.\u00a0And people can\u2019t get enough.\r\n\u201cI haven\u2019t seen a doctor in eight years,\u201d the New Yorker\u00a0quoted\u00a0one viewer telling Oz. \u201cI\u2019m scared. You\u2019re the only one I trust.\u201d\r\nBut is that trust misplaced? Or has Oz, who often peddles miracle cures for weight loss and other maladies, mortgaged medical veracity for entertainment value?\r\nThese questions have hammered\u00a0Oz for months. In June, he was\u00a0hauled in front\u00a0of Congress, where Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told him he gave people false hope and criticized his segments as\u00a0a \u201crecipe for disaster.\u201d Then last month, a study he widely trumpeted lauding coffee bean weight-loss pills\u00a0was retracted\u00a0despite Oz\u2019s\u00a0assertions\u00a0it could\u00a0\u201cburn fat fast for anyone who wants to lose weight.\u201d\r\n\r\nSen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) questioned TV host Dr. Mehmet Oz about his claims that certain products are \"miracle\" workers during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on June 18, 2014 (Senator Claire McCaskill via YouTube)\r\n\r\nAnd now, his work has come under even greater scrutiny in\u00a0the British Medical Journal, which on Wednesday\u00a0published a study\u00a0analyzing Oz\u2019s claims along with those made on another medical talk show. What they found wasn\u2019t reassuring. The researchers, led by Christina Korownyk of the University of Alberta, charged medical research either didn\u2019t substantiate \u2014 or flat out contradicted \u2014 more than half of Oz\u2019s recommendations. \u201cRecommendations made on medical talk shows often lack adequate information on specific benefits or the magnitude of the effects of these benefits,\u201d the article\u00a0said. \u201c\u2026 The public should be skeptical about recommendations made on medical talk shows.\u201d\r\nThe study is part of an ongoing debate about\u00a0medicine on television. There\u2019s clearly a market for doctor talk shows. \u201cThe Dr. Oz Show\u201d ranks in the top five talk shows in the United States, bringing in a haul of roughly 2.9 million viewers per day. And the talk show \u201cThe Doctors,\u201d also studied in the paper, nets around 2.3 million viewers per show. These days, Oz considers\u00a0disease in terms of marketability. Cancer, he\u00a0told\u00a0the New Yorker, \u201cis our Angelina Jolie. We could sell that show every day.\u201d\r\nBut some doctors have\u00a0expressed\u00a0alarm\u00a0at\u00a0Oz\u2019s willingness to sell it. \u201cAlthough perhaps not as \u2018sexy\u2019 as Dr. Oz would like, the public needs more information about the effects of diet as a whole on cancer risk,\u201d\u00a0commentedone paper titled \u201cReality Check: There is no such thing as a miracle food\u201d in the journal of Nutrition and Cancer. It lambasted\u00a0Oz\u2019s assertion that endive, red onion and sea bass can decrease the likelihood of ovarian cancer by 75 percent.\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u201cMehmet is now an entertainer,\u201d New York doctor Eric Rose\u00a0told\u00a0the New Yorker. \u201cAnd he\u2019s great at it. People learn a lot, and it can be meaningful in their lives. \u2026 [But] sometimes Mehmet will entertain wacky ideas \u2014 particularly if they are wacky and have entertainment value.\u201d\r\nOz, for his part, said\u00a0he\u2019s only trying to give people all the options out there. He said\u00a0data shouldn\u2019t stop patients from testing out things like raspberry ketone \u2014 a\u00a0\u201cmiracle in a bottle to burn your fat\u201d \u2014 even if it\u2019s never been tested on people,\u00a0according\u00a0to Slate.\u00a0\u201cI recognize that oftentimes they don\u2019t have the scientific muster to present as fact,\u201d Oz\u00a0said\u00a0at a U.S. Senate hearing, adding that he \u201cpersonally believes in the items I talk about in my show.\u201d \u201cBut, nevertheless, I give my audience the advice I give my family all the time. I give my family these products, specifically the ones you mentioned. I\u2019m comfortable with that part.\u201d\r\nBut researchers with the British Medical Journal weren\u2019t nearly so\u00a0comfortable. They selected 40\u00a0episodes from last year, identifying 479 separate medical recommendations. After paging through the relevant medical research, they found evidence only supported 46 percent of his recommendations, contradicted 15 percent and wasn\u2019t\u00a0available\u00a0for 39 percent.\r\nThe study was not without its limitations, however.\u00a0The researchers conceded it was difficult to parse \u201cwhat was said and what was implied.\u201d And some\u00a0of the recommendations were extremely general \u2014 \u201csneezing into your elbow prevents the spread of germs\u201d \u2014 and consequently difficult to find\u00a0in medical research, let alone substantiate.\r\nStill, the article was\u00a0a\u00a0withering assessment of Oz and the whole doctor talk show business. \u201cConsumers should be skeptical about any recommendations provided on television medical talk shows, as details are limited and only a third to one half of recommendations are based on believable or somewhat believable evidence,\u201d the paper\u00a0said. \u201c\u2026 Decisions around healthcare issues are often challenging and require much more than non-specific recommendations based on little or no evidence.\u201d\r\nBut Oz considers\u00a0himself an iconoclast trying to shake up a stodgy medical community. \u201cMuch of medicine is just plain old logic,\u201d he told the New Yorker. \u201cSo I am out there trying to persuade people to be patients. And that often means telling them what the establishment doesn\u2019t want to hear: that their answers are not only the answers, and their medicine is not the only medicine.\u201d\r\n            \r\n             \r\n            \r\n            \n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tPrint\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tEmail\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t  \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTweet", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/media-center/latest-headlines/half-of-dr-ozs-medical-advice-is-baseless-or-wrong-study-says"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.2673288583755493, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}