Viewpoint: Why Columbia University has disaffiliated itself from ‘pseudoscience quack’ Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz

[Dr. Mehmet] Oz—who won the Republican primary last June, and is currently neck and neck with Democratic candidate John Fetterman—describes himself as a “Professor Emeritus at Columbia University” on the campaign website that sprung up after the announcement.

Throughout the election cycle, Columbia has stayed silent on Oz, whose campaign office did not respond to requests for comment. But the University has also gone further, quietly scrubbing Oz from its webpages and directories in what has struck many as a secretive attempt at disaffiliation. The recent changes come after years of criticism of Columbia by the medical community for maintaining ties to Oz despite his promotion of pseudoscience and misinformation on his influential talk show.

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Dr. Henry Miller, who would later become involved in the campaign to have Oz ousted from Columbia, cited the white mulberry leaf so often promoted by Oz on his show, which in fact killed a woman in 2021.

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In the fall of 2012, Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam and Dr. Martina Newell-McGloughlin appeared on The Dr. Oz Show. Both highly accredited, well-respected researchers, Van Eenennaam and Newell-McGloughlin were aware of the show’s record of scientific delinquency, especially when it came to their own fields: Oz had been waging a campaign against genetically modified organisms for years despite scientific consensus contradicting his claims of the overwhelming harms of GMOs.

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Van Eenennaam was disturbed by the impression of GMOs that Oz gave to his audience. Oz recorded an introduction to the interview segments in which he cited a debunked report claiming that GMOs “can damage your health and even cause cancer.” They later learned that he had pre-scripted a conclusion in which he advised viewers on how to “avoid” GMOs.

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For more than a decade, Oz’s Columbia ties have long been a source of confusion and frustration for many doctors and academics.

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Columbia’s name will always be associated with Oz’s no matter how far the University goes to minimize him from its public image. On November 8, Pennsylvania voters will decide whether to elect Oz to the Senate; available to them as they make this decision will be Oz’s campaign website, telling voters that Oz was “an Attending Physician at NY Presbyterian-Columbia Medical Center” and “serves as Professor Emeritus at Columbia University.”

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