I’ve never made it much of a secret that I don’t much like “America’s doctor,” Dr. Mehmet Oz. Just enter his name into the search box of this blog, and you’ll find quite a few posts in which I deconstruct some bit of quackery that Dr. Oz has promoted on his show, be it his promotion of faith healing and even psychic medium quackery from the likes of John Edward and Theresa Caputo (a.k.a. the Long Island Medium, who was—surprise! surprise!—recently reported to be a fraud); his fear mongering over the non-existent link between cell phone radiation and cancer; regular promotional visits by über-quack Joe Mercola; recommending homeopathy as a cure all; and even taking seriously one of the quackiest quacks on the Internet, New World Order conspiracy theorist, former Y2K scammer, and self-styled scientist, the “Health Ranger” Mike Adams, who seems not to understand that things look very different under the microscope. It’s not for nothing that I’ve characterized Dr. Oz not as “America’s doctor,” but rather “America’s quack.” It’s a characterization that he has more than earned, given his utter abdication of professional responsibility.

Heck, he’s even piled onto the dubious “gluten-free” craze with today’s show.

If there’s one thing that Dr. Oz is probably most known for, if there’s one scam that Dr. Oz most frequently features on his show, it’s weight loss scams. Most hilariously, recently, Oz went all “under cover,” as though he thought he were Morly Safer and Dan Rather on the 60 Minutes of old (back before Lara Logan, of course), showing up at the office of a ne’er-do-well to confront him in his lair with evidence of his perfidy. It’s the ne’er-do-well he confronted that blew my irony meter. Specifically, it was manufacturers of a supplement, Garcinia Gambogia, which a company had claimed to be endorsed by Dr. Oz. While it’s true that Dr. Oz never endorsed the specific brand of Garcinia Gambogia that the company sold, it’s not hard to figure out where companies get the idea that Dr. Oz recommends Garcinia Gambogia as a weight loss miracle, given that Dr. Oz’s selling of the supplement was described thusly:

As people were getting ready for the holiday season and its accompanying waist expansion late last year, Dr. Mehmet Oz let viewers of his TV show in on a timely little secret. “Everybody wants to know what’s the newest, fastest fat buster,” said the board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon and one of People magazine’s sexiest men alive. “How can I burn fat without spending every waking moment exercising and dieting?”

He then told his audience about a “breakthrough,” “magic,” “holy grail,” even “revolutionary” new fat buster. “I want you to write it down,” America’s doctor urged his audience with a serious and trustworthy stare. After carefully wrapping his lips around the exotic words “Garcinia cambogia,” he added, sternly: “It may be the simple solution you’ve been looking for to bust your body fat for good.”

Then there was the “green coffee bean” incident, in which Dr. Oz, in his eagerness to promote green coffee bean extract as yet another “miracle” weight loss supplement, conducted what was in essence a small unethical clinical trial and touted the results of a company-run clinical trial that did not show nearly as strongly what he claimed it showed. This bogus trial is still featured on Dr. Oz’s website as The Green Coffee Bean Project.