Dr. Oz
Cardiac Surgeon Turned Television Health Host
Mehmet Oz is a trained cardiac surgeon who held a faculty position at Columbia University before building a career in television health media. He appeared regularly on The Oprah Winfrey Show before launching his own daytime program, The Dr. Oz Show, which ran from 2009 to 2022. The show made him one of the most recognizable medical personalities in the United States and gave him significant influence over public health attitudes and supplement purchasing decisions.
A 2014 study published in the BMJ analyzed eighty recommendations from The Dr. Oz Show and found that only about a third were supported by scientific evidence, while roughly a third contradicted available evidence. That same year, Oz was called before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on consumer protection, where Senator Claire McCaskill challenged him directly about promoting weight loss products with little scientific backing, arguing that his credentials as a physician made those endorsements more influential and therefore more potentially harmful. Oz acknowledged he used "flowery language" and said he believed in the products but acknowledged the evidence was sometimes limited.
The "Oz Effect" became an industry term for the phenomenon where products mentioned on his show — including green coffee bean extract, garcinia cambogia, and raspberry ketones — experienced dramatic sales increases. The FTC took action against manufacturers of green coffee bean extract who used Oz's endorsement in their marketing; the product's underlying research was later found to have been fabricated. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Oz promoted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment based on early and ultimately unsupported evidence, a recommendation that drew criticism from infectious disease specialists.
Oz ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican in Pennsylvania in 2022, losing the general election. His television program ended that same year. His case is frequently cited in discussions about the responsibilities of medical professionals who build large public platforms and the gap between scientific evidence and wellness media claims.