Dr Oz enables a lot of scammers and quacks. This story about Lindsey Duncan is an eye-opener about how the alternative medicine frauds operate.
Duncan is a “naturopathic doctor and “celebrity nutritionist,” which means he isn’t really any kind of doctor at all, and he makes money peddling pills that don’t do much of anything. For some reason, the producers of the Dr Oz show feel that’s sufficient qualifications to show up and offer glib testimonies about the efficacy of quack nostrums, so they called him up and asked him to come on the show and tout the weight loss power of green coffee beans.
Duncan knew nothing about green coffee beans, and he didn’t even sell them on his site…yet. But opportunity had come knocking, so his staff wasted no time in claiming that he was an expert and booking him for the show.
You can guess what happened next. Duncan also wasted no time in buying up green coffee beans, and in the very best SEO style, making sure he had keywords that would direct browsers right to his storefront. And the Dr Oz show helped him do it!
The producer allowed Duncan to edit the script, writing the very words Oz would utter on the show. He added language that "would advise viewers that they could find green coffee bean capsules online by typing the words ‘Pure Green Coffee Bean Capsules’ into their web browsers… [he also] added language in which Duncan would advise viewers to ‘take two 400 mg vegetarian capsules,’" according to the FTC.
The producer followed up with Duncan, asking whether he could recommend a particular brand of green coffee bean supplement.
Duncan didn’t reply right away. Instead, he emailed his employees: "This is either a set up or manna from the heavens . . . Please get Green Coffee Bean up on our site immediately!!! I will then recco the PH site!!!!! Let me know when it’s up!"
Furthermore, they quickly maneuvered to arrange a bulk sale to Walmart.
After the episode taping, one of Duncan’s employees emailed a contact at Walmart again: “We just left a taping at the Dr. Oz show today, and Dr. Lindsey unveiled a new supplement that millions of Americans are going to want when this show airs in 2 weeks, and we have a product developed and ready to produce for Dept. 82 at Walmart. You are probably aware of the ‘Oz Effect,’ this will be the Oz Effect on steroids!”
It was a $50 million sale.
Dr Oz isn’t in trouble over this — it was just passive stupidity on his part that allowed Duncan to take advantage of the Oz bullhorn. One of the companies that profited from the scam — I get the impression that Duncan fronts a whole lot of trash, and skips away to avoid guilt — has settled with the FTC in an arrangement that lets them declare that they weren’t found at fault.
Oz really is a figurehead for a criminal operation. I don’t know how he keeps his medical license.
Cracked.com has an article today entitled “4 Ways Oprah Winfrey Changed the World (For the Worse).” Guess who’s number one on the list? And the green coffee bean thing is specifically called out.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-ways-oprah-winfrey-changed-world-for-worse/
Oz is a fool. How he managed to graduate medical school is the real mystery. He’s a hack of the worst kind, prone to woo and magic rather than evidence. I really and truly wish he were not among our ranks as an M.D., he’s better of with an N.D. or some other non-degree that let’s those of use with a lick of reason realize that he doesn’t know his butt from a hole in the ground.
@2: Oz, by most accounts, is a gifted surgeon. He should stick to surgery.
Unfortunately I have relatives who watch all this junk and then get on the internet machine, “verify” the BS and make “lifestyle changes.”
My sister-in-law became convinced that she had to take a test that would tell her with supreme exactitude which foods she couldn’t eat. She paid a lot of money for the test and now she knows that she can’t eat beef, but bison is super OK, salmon is fine but shrimp is really bad, etc. She won’t tell me what the test is. But it’s easy to dismiss it as junk science since I can’t think of another medical test that provides such ultra specific information on nutrition. Sure, there are allergy tests, but can one be allergic to beef and not to bison? Does one contain pollen and the other doesn’t?
#4 – Didn’t you know? Bison is probably just more “natural” than cattle, and everyone KNOWS that “natural” is always better! (As an environmental science teacher, I have to deal with that every semester, they’ve heard it so often)
@4: Yes, seemingly irrelevant changes like that can make the difference between being allergic or not. One of the standard pieces of advice for people with a milk allergy is to try goat’s milk as the most common milk allergen isn’t present at the same level as in cow’s milk[1].
It wouldn’t surprise me to find that someone could react to a protein found in beef that isn’t in bison.
[1] Didn’t work for me: I have the hyperactivity reaction and goat’s milk had me literally climbing the walls.
@caseyrock #2 – No, Dr. Oz is not a fool. He is a Harvard-trained surgeon with qualifications that most other surgeons can only envy.
But at some point he decided he was not content with the 1%er salary of a surgeon like him. He wanted to make even *more* money, and started doing his show. His choice was deliberate and calculated, and everything he says on the show is directed towards his goal of fleecing the masses for his own enrichment. He is a marketing genius, and a millionaire many times over.
He knows exactly what he is doing.
Oz gets away with it because he has no financial stake in any of the supplements or other quackery he pushes on his program. Another Vox.com article discusses Why Dr. Oz can say anything and keep his medical license:
joel @7 – “But at some point he decided he was not content with the 1%er salary of a surgeon like him. He wanted to make even *more* money, and started doing his show. His choice was deliberate and calculated, and everything he says on the show is directed towards his goal of fleecing the masses for his own enrichment.”
Oz is a surgeon, and like many surgeons he loves being the center of attention, and he does crazy stuff to fill his void of insecurity. In the operating room, he is obeyed by a small number of people’s attention; on his show he is adored by millions. I think his primary motivation isn’t financial. But feeding a voracious ego is a much stronger motivator than making a buck.
As for his license: on the show, he’s not practicing medicine. Unless he’s convicted of a felony, activities outside of practice can’t (and shouldn’t) lead to loss of licensure.
david
He gives medical advice clearly setting himself up as a doctor. How is this not ‘practising medicine’?
What Al Dente said. Medical licensing boards aren’t even that interested in expelling incompetent physicians or who abuse their patients; you think they care about quackery?
Wouldn’t surprise me. It’s certainly not common, but I’m sure it’s possible.
joel,
Yes, he’s a fool. He’s a fool for eschewing evidence in favor of what he wants to think is true. He’s a fool for using his credentials to mislead the public. He’s a fool for many reasons, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make money. Becoming a millionaire doesn’t take brains and being a millionaire doesn’t automatically make you smart. Besides, the people who watch Oprah are a very woo-oriented crowd, so it comes as no surprise that they would fall for Oz and make him rich. Are you really going to claim that the links of Benny Hinn, Ted Haggard, Billy Graham, etc. are not foolish? Are you going to call them geniuses because they are wealthy? It takes more than touting bullshit to people who are grasping at straws because they NEED to believe in something to make someone smart. Plus, I know plenty of fools who are M.D.s, so that alone isn’t a guarantee either.
Gluten. It’s probably all about the gluten. Cattle are fed grains and bison eat grass. Or something. Gluten hysteria is at such a high that a saw a readerboard at the farm stand for “Organic Gluten-free Eggs”.
@caseyrock 13
That really depends on your definition of fool. He was an accomplished enough surgeon to teach at Columbia. Odds are he isn’t fool enough to believe the crap he peddles. He is willing to peddle that crap to fools. That doesn’t make him a fool, it makes him a swindler that takes advantage of fools.
Personally, I think Oz is a figurehead and his producers are cynically letting scammers use the show as a marketing tool.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/01/28/dr-ozs-green-coffee-bean-extract-scammer-guest-must-repay-9-million/