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Dr. Quack on Oprah

Monza

Alta Viro
Monza
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Jan 21, 2005
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I happened to watch some of the Oprah Winfrey show today (please don't ask). She had as a guest Dr. Oz, a legitemate MD to answer qustions about the human body. Dr. Oz brought up the subject of acupunture and acupressure and stated these are scientific pratices. He explained how the body contains meridians, or lines of energy, that, if blocked, can make us sick.

Oprah actually asked a very good question. She asked if other doctors believe this as well. Dr. Oz replied that there are some doctors who are on the "cutting edge" and realize that science does not know everything. Then the discussion went on about how the body is made of energy and that we are held together by energy or something about our protons being held together by energy.

Now, I will give you that our body, or the atoms that comprise our body, are held together by the strong nuclear force. Notice it is a force, not energy, and this is not what the good doctor was talking about. If there is an "energy" flowing through our bodies along meridians then it should be able to be detected and measured. How many joules are we talking about? If a meridian is blocked, what happens to that energy as a result of the Law of Conservation? It frightens me that a man who has been through medical school can have such a lack of critical thinking skills.

Now, I hope that real scientists and engineers put their "energy" into developing an interactive television. This way, I can reach into the TV and slap the next person who spuots this nonsense.
 
Is this the guy? Evidently, he's Harvard graduate and yet, judging by that website, he's fairly much into woo.
 
Yeah, that's him. The guy on the right of the picture.

Someone on another thread provided a quote that seems appropriate:

Q: What do you call the medical student that graduates at the bottom of his class.

A: Doctor
 
Another case of a person using legitimate credentials to bolster his idiotic beliefs that he can't support with those credentials.
 
Monza said:
Now, I will give you that our body, or the atoms that comprise our body, are held together by the strong nuclear force.

This way, I can reach into the TV and slap the next person who spuots this nonsense.
Click to expand...

Er, um, the molecules of the body are held together, internally and externally, by electromagnetic forces; the strong nuclear force holds the constituent atoms' nuclei together.

Careful about what your spuoting there.
 
Dr. Oz lets an energy healer into his open heart surgery operating room. Julie Motz, the healer, who wrote the book "The Hands of Life" is a total woo-woo. I wrote a book review that is pending publication in The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine. Here's a quote: "She reassures and welcomes the transplanted heart and thanks the body for accepting it; she communes with the blood cells and tells them to pretend they are cerebrospinal fluid as they flow through the bypass pump. Dr. Oz credits her with the success when a transplanted heart is persuaded to start beating, saying he didn’t know what she did in there, but he’d never seen a heart come back so fast." Of course, no attempt at controlled studies.

Dr. Oz was also interviewed on the John of God psychic surgeon TV episode, where he accepted the possibility that the surgeon was really doing something by sticking an instrument up the patient's nose. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was incompatible with anatomy.

I was just thinking, some of the real weirdos come from Harvard, like John Mack, the alien abduction psychiatrist. I looked Oz up and guess where he did his undergraduate education? Yep, Harvard. There must be something in the water there.
 
Monza said:
Dr. Oz brought up the subject of acupunture and acupressure and stated these are scientific pratices.

Dr. Oz replied that there are some doctors who are on the "cutting edge" and realize that science does not know everything.
Click to expand...

:confused: How can acu-n be scientific and yet not within the ken of science?
 
shadron said:
Er, um, the molecules of the body are held together, internally and externally, by electromagnetic forces; the strong nuclear force holds the constituent atoms' nuclei together.

Careful about what your spuoting there.
Click to expand...

I had to re-read my original sentence a few times as I couldn't understand why you thought I was wrong. Now I see that what I wrote doesn't exactly convey what I was thinking at the time. I did mean that that each atom itself is held together by the strong nuclear force, not one atom held to another atom. And you are right, this concerns the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom.

By the way, did you deliberately misspell "spout" as I did just to mock me some more? I notice that I make more spelling errors on my Mac keyboard than on my PC.
 
Well, Tim Leary and Richard "Ram Dass" Alpert were also Harvard Crimson. I followed a bit of their teaching for a while, (I did tune in, and to some extent dropped out) but ultimately realized that the bold social experiment that was proposed didn't have the data behind it. Most people that tripped a lot and introspected, in my experience, haven't had the influence on arts or society that they predicted. Paris Hilton is probably more influential on more people now that Ram Dass. But that is a silly analogy, just like John Lennon saying the same thing about the Beatles and Jesus.

For what it's worth, my two cents! Scooter
 
The SkepDoc said:
Dr. Oz was also interviewed on the John of God psychic surgeon TV episode, where he accepted the possibility that the surgeon was really doing something by sticking an instrument up the patient's nose. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was incompatible with anatomy.
Click to expand...

Was he the guy who said that John of God could have been stimulating the person's pituitary gland in spite of the fact that the pituitary gland is covered by bone?
 
Oprah usually asks pretty good questions, like what everyone is wondering. I <3 her, I am betting that she didnt expect quackery based on her question about other doctors.
 
Slimething said:
:confused: How can acu-n be scientific and yet not within the ken of science?
Click to expand...


I was wondering the same thing. I have no problem with the claim that there are things beyond what we know by science (and always will be, btw). However, he had just claimed it WAS known by science. So why the backpedal?
 
I read a profile of Dr. Oz in People magazine where he exposed more outrageous woo-woo. Can't remember exactly what is was but it was about alternative medicine.

I find it absolutely inexplicable and unreconcilable that this woo-woo pusher is a surgeon, let alone one from Harvard. They must have left the science out of the science throughout his whole education.
 
I believe Oz is a regular on Oprah's radio show and in a smaller degree, the TV show.

Shame on her for promoting such quackery.
 
Hey. I also got pretty amazed when she invited the "wise people" from The Secret.
I wonder why she doesn't invite people from Nasa or people who can really communicate about science to "normal people" like Michio Kaku or Neil deGrasse Tyson.
She has done a few things like this, like, inviting the creator of the "HowStuffWorks" website.
I would really like her to invite people other than doctors to talk about diets and obesity.
 
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Hourglassmemory said:
Hey. I also got pretty amazed when she invited the "wise people" from The Secret.
I wonder why she doesn't invite people from Nasa or people who can really communicate about science to "normal people" like Michio Kaku or Neil deGrasse Tyson.
She has done a few things like this, like, inviting the creator of the "HowStuffWorks" website.
I would really like her to invite people other than doctors to talk about diets and obesity.
Click to expand...

Oprah is a slave to pop culture. She doesn't create it so much as ride the first waves. She also has to keep it rather mindless otherwise she'll lose the short attention span of her audience.
 
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