David Gorski is a physician who blogs at Science-Based Medicine. One of his recent postings has been published in today's issue of The Toronto star as: Is Oprah Winfrey giving us bad medicine?.
Unfortunately, Oprah displays as close to no critical-thinking skills when it comes to science and medicine as I've ever seen, and uses the vast influence her TV show and media empire give her in order to subject the world to her special brand of mystical New Age thinking and belief in various forms of what can only be characterized as dubious medical therapies at best and quackery at worst.There's an interesting background to this story ans David Gorski recounts in the blog [“The Oprah-fication of Medicine” in The Toronto Star].
Naturally, Oprah doesn't see it that way, and likely no one could ever convince her of the malign effect she has on the national zeitgeist with respect to science and medicine.
Consequently, whether fair or unfair, she represents the perfect face to put on the problem that we supporters of science-based medicine face when trying to get the message out to the average reader about unscientific medical practices, and that's why I am referring to the pervasiveness of pseudoscience infiltrating medicine as the "Oprah-fication" of medicine.
No one was more shocked than I was when the editor of Sunday Insight section of The Toronto Star contacted me earlier this week to ask if he could adapt my post to a newspaper editorial.This is a really good sign. A newspaper realizes that blogging and publishing newspapers are not necessarily in competition.
It's a shame that the editor didn't leave the "Is" and "?" out of the title.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a great article as well.
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