Normally, I don’t look forward to Mondays, but today is an exception… we hosted 5 of our kids’ friends from the Tri-Cities for the weekend. Nothing like having\u00a07 teenagers (ok, 6 teenagers – Number One Son is actually 22) around the house, to feed, transport, and\u00a0tip-toe around\u00a0in the morning. A good time, however, was had by all – even the chauffeur (yours truly – I rented a Dodge minivan for the occasion).<\/p>\n
At any rate, while I was prepping for the visit, I was amused to discover this post on Dr. Oz’s promotion of green coffee bean extract<\/a> by pharmacist Scott Gavura<\/a> at Science-Based Medicine<\/a>. As you might already know, Paul (with a bit of help from moi) wrote about this shortly after seeing the show (here<\/a> and here<\/a>). Not all the points that I discussed with Paul made it into his published review, so I was delighted to see Gavura’s\u00a0take on them. I didn’t have the time to post about it last week, but I do now!<\/p>\n Short version: Dr. Oz has chosen to sensationalize the results of a small study with serious methodological flaws.<\/p>\n A taste of the longer version:<\/p>\n …So when the sign in front of my local pharmacy started advertising \u201cGreen coffee beans \u2013 as seen on Dr. Oz\u201d, I tracked down the clip in question. The last time I saw Dr. Oz in action when when he had SBM\u2019s own Steven Novella<\/a> as a guest, where there was actually a exchange (albeit brief) about the scientific evidence for alternative medicine. Replace Dr. Novella with a naturopath<\/a>, and you get this:<\/p>\n [youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?&v=Lyai2fcMS7Q]<\/p>\n Yes, Oz did use the terms \u201cmagic\u201d, \u201cstaggering\u201d, \u201cunprecedented\u201d, \u201ccure\u201d and \u201cmiracle pill\u201d. And clearly the naturopath, Lindsay Duncan, is enamored with this product. But Dr. Oz is a health professional \u2013 he\u2019s the Vice-Chair of the Department of Surgery at Columbia University. He\u2019d be a bit skeptical, right? This exchange at the end, made me shake my head \u2013 Dr. Oz really has crossed the woobicon<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Now I always pride myself at having the smartest TV audience out there. So I\u2019m hoping that some of you are skeptical about this. I was certainly skeptical about it. Am I speaking for a couple of you, anyway? It does seem a little too good to be true.”<\/p>\n So what did Dr. Oz do \u2013 issue cautions about obesity panaceas? No. He created some anecdotes:<\/p>\n “So I gave the supplements to two viewers 5 days ago. I gave all the information I could find on this product to our medical unit, they did diligent work, but we still wanted to see what would happen in real life.”<\/p>\n One viewer dropped 2 pounds in 5 days. The other viewer lost 6 pounds in 5 days. Convincing weight loss? It was persuasive to Dr. Oz.<\/p>\n So now I\u2019m going to do what Dr. Oz, the producers of the show, and the naturopath Lindsay Duncan didn\u2019t do \u2014 actually review the evidence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n