Dr. Oz Tried To Be a Vaccine Influencer. This Time It Didn’t Work.
The TV talk show doctor-turned-hopeful celebrity politician Mehmet Oz is … shall we say … not my favorite science communicator. The man’s got a pattern: take an obscure supplement like raspberry ketones; add a common physical struggle like weight loss; hype the supplement’s benefits with language so overblown and un-nuanced that it’s gotten him in trouble in a Senate subcommittee hearing; and frame it all in language about “secret” miracle cures.
His modus operandi, in other words, is an absolute mess of alternative medicine hucksterism. In fact, a 2014 paper published in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal found that “The Dr. Oz Show” was even less evidence-based than another popular health information program.
But the weird thing about Oz is he has, at times, deviated from his own script. And when he has, it’s had a positive influence. For example, as recently as 2014, Oz was doing interviews on his show with anti-vaccine advocates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Joseph Mercola. But in 2019, he publicly and clearly staked out a pro-vaccine position. And when that happened, by sheer coincidence, a team of researchers was in the middle of studying the science beliefs of Oz’s audience. That means they were able to interview Oz watchers before and after the episode in which Oz endorsed the safety and efficacy of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. They found a significant increase in respondents’ understanding of vaccine safety after the pro-vaccine episode aired: The percent of low-knowledge Oz viewers who said MMR vaccines were safe increased 16 percent, and the percentage that said flu vaccines were safe increased 17 percent.
There’s not similarly serendipitous data to see what happened when Oz shifted from being a guy who recommended everyone try hydroxychloroquine in April 2020 to a guy who publicly touted getting the COVID-19 shot in January 2021. But it was interesting to me to learn that he might be paying a political price for that choice now.
If Oz is today losing some credibility among his Republican primary voting base because of support for vaccination against COVID-19, whereas past pro-vaccine outreach brought vaccine skeptics along with him, it would track with what we’ve seen in how Republicans are changing their views toward medical expertise.
Until very recently, there wasn’t much difference in how much trust Republicans and Democrats had in scientists, doctors, and science as an institution. There were partisan differences on specific, heavily politicized issues — climate change, for example. But it’s only in the last three years that, for the first time, Pew data has begun to show partisan divides on basic “do you trust scientists?” kind of questions.
In 2019, 70 percent of Republicans said science had a mostly positive effect on society. By 2021 it was down to 57 percent, while Democrats remained in the high 70s both years. And in just the span of a year, between November 2020 and December 2021, the percentage of Republicans who said they trusted medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public dropped from 81 percent to 66 percent.
In 2019, Oz could take a pro-vaccine message to a broad audience and that audience both trusted him as a doctor and was willing to change their minds when he did. Now, he’s finding he can’t get the same results from Republican voters.