Skeptologic

I think it’s a little ironic that the category of woo that I used to be least interested in is the one I seem to be writing about most, so called “complimentary and alternative medicine” or CAM. Oh wait, let’s add supplements to that so we get a more suitable acronym: SCAM. Much better. Anyway, it has recently come to my attention that Dr. Mehmet Oz, a favorite on the Oprah Winfrey show, is going to get his own show. From what I have seen of him so far, I think this is a bad idea. Normally with out and out promoters of nonsense this is where I would start the name calling. However, I am going to stop short (barely) of calling Dr. Oz a quack.  I am sure he is a fine cardiothoracic surgeon and serves his patients well. My problem with Dr. Oz is that in addition to real medicine, he is a big promoter of non scientific medicine that is based on, well, crap.

I have seen Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey show a couple of times and both times he made statements that were misleading and potentially harmful. On one episode a member of the audience asked him about having their feet massaged to relieve stress. Nothing wrong with that, it would have been fine for him to recommend a foot massage as a method of relaxation. However, instead of just telling the person to get a foot massage, he recommended a method of deep tissue massage known as Rolfing. A Google search of Rolfing quickly reveals tons of pseudo-scientific gibberish about how it is supposed to “align the human body with gravity” and can “restore energy flow.” It also leads people to other non evidence based “energy healing” modalities such as Reiki and Reflexology. So what is the problem with this? Nothing if all you want is a massage because it feels good, but many practitioners of these techniques claim that they can use them to actually cure serious diseases. If a person who is seriously ill avoids real medical treatment for one of these methods it can lead to their condition becoming worse or even to their death. By having a real doctor point a largely uncritical audience to these methods, it gives them an air of legitimacy that they don’t deserve.

On another episode, Dr. Oz recommended acupuncture to a woman who had pain in her shoulder. He sends her backstage for a treatment with an acupuncturist and (surprise surprise) when she comes back, she feels better. Many people watching this view it as a test that shows that acupuncture works. In order to test something like this properly, you would need a large group of people with similar symptoms. You would then need to divide them into two groups at random. One group would get so called “real” acupuncture where the practitioner inserts the needles where they should be inserted (acupuncturists believe there are what they call meridian points in the body) and another group would get sham acupuncture where the needles are inserted anywhere or are not inserted far enough. What is most important is that the study must be blinded so each group does not know what they are getting. Better yet, the test should be double blind so that neither the participants nor the person administering the test know which is which. Granted, this would be difficult to do with acupuncture, but some methods have been devised, such as having the needles inside of a sheath so the practitioner and patient don’t know if the needle is going in fully or not. These controls are important to filter out bias, the placebo effect, etc. Many studies have been done on acupuncture and other “energy healing” techniques and the all follow a similar pattern: The better designed the study is, the less of an effect there is and the best designed studies show no effect at all. Again, if all you are looking for is pain relief and you get a placebo effect from it there is nothing wrong with it. But right there on the show the acupuncturist, while giving Oprah herself a “wellness” treatment, claims that “Acupuncture treats any condition from allergies to, obviously, pain to gastrointestinal issues—a wide range of chronic diseases.” Telling people that sticking little needles into their skin can treat “any condition” and “a wide range of chronic diseases” is egregious, irresponsible, and dangerous.

Dr. Oz himself chimed in on the “science” of acupuncture and alternative medicine. The following quotes are taken directly from Oprah’s website:

“Here’s the irony—acupuncture has been around for 2,500 years in China,” Dr. Oz says. “There are a billion people in another part of the world who use these therapies.”

Here Dr. Oz makes logical fallacy of an appeal to ancient knowledge. Just because something has been around for 2,500 years does not necessarily make it valid. Just over a century ago in the west, before medicine became scientific, if you went to the doctor they would do something like try to bleed you with leeches in an effort to “balance your bodily humors.” I wouldn’t want 150 year old unscientific medicine performed on me, much less unscientific medicine from 2,500 years ago. When he states that a billion people use it, that is another fallacy known as argumentum ad populum or an appeal to popularity. How popular something is has no bearing whatsoever on whether it is true or not. Even if every person on the planet thought that one plus one equaled three, that would not make it true, one plus one would still equal two. It wouldn’t make any difference if six billion people liked acupuncture (or something else) and used it, that is not a criteria to judge its efficacy.

“But let’s broaden the discussion, because it’s not just about acupuncture,” Dr. Oz says. “The reason I’m so excited and passionate about alternative medicine is … [because it is] the globalization of medicine.”

Dr. Oz talks about his passion for alternative medicine, saying that it’s the “globalization of medicine,” presumably bringing together east and west. I don’t really like the term western medicine. It implies that where a particular treatment originated it what makes it real or better. The terms western medicine, Chinese medicine, Indian medicine, holistic medicine, alternative medicine, etc, are quite meaningless. This is not about one country or culture being better than the other. This is about whether or not the methods and treatments in question work, no matter where they come from. There is only scientific medicine which is based on evidence, and unscientific medicine which is based on superstition. There are plenty of unscientific medical methods that were made up in the west. Some examples are Homeopathy (Germany), Chiropractic (United States), and Iridology (Hungary). If any of these were to be scientifically proven, they would cease to be alternative and just be part of regular medicine.

Alternative medicines, Dr. Oz says, deal with the body’s energy—something that traditional Western medicine generally does not. “We’re beginning now to understand things that we know in our hearts are true but we could never measure,” he says. “As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier … in medicine is energy medicine. It’s not the mechanistic part of the joints moving. It’s not the chemistry of our body. It’s understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel.”

I keep having to remind myself that this guy is a actually a medical doctor. Statements like that make me wonder if he ever cracked a science book in all those years of medical school. People who practice or promote unscientific healing techniques seem to think that energy is a substance. Their ideas center around “restoring the flow of energy”or “unblocking energy.” In this context the word energy is completely and utterly meaningless. Energy is not some kind of substance that can be manipulated to promote healing. Energy is a measurement of the capacity of something to perform work. In other words it is the potential or actual ability to move things. If Dr. Oz could prove or “measure” things like Chi, Prana, Auras, or any of the types of mystical “Life Force Energy” claimed in these practices, he would win the Nobel Prize for physics. Did he? Did I miss that news story? Of course not, it would major news because it would change everything we know about reality. Keep in mind here that energy is not something you measure, energy is itself a measurement of work. Sorry Dr. Oz but the next frontier in medicine is not “energy medicine” as you claim. Here’s a news flash for you: Metaphysical concepts such as vitalism were abandoned by medical science in the 19th century. You are over a century behind the times on that one.

In an ideal world, people like Dr. Steven Barrett, Dr. Steven Novella, or Dr. Mark Crislip would get their own television shows about the wonderful scientific medicine we have that has doubled our life expectancy in just the last century. As for Oz, just like in the movie, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the magic he is pushing is not what it’s cracked up to be.