Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, for 16 years hosted a popular, syndicated daytime television show. He has leaned on his TV doctor credentials in his campaign.
But his candidacy has encouraged the news media to examine his longtime spread of misinformation, including what University of Alberta professor Timothy Caulfield called in Scientific American “misleading, science-free and unproven alternative therapies.” His Democratic opponent, John Fetterman, has been running television ads about Oz’s questionable recommendations, which public health professionals scorn. A group of Pennsylvania doctors called “Real Doctors Against Oz” have begun campaigning against his candidacy, pronouncing it “a major threat to public health.”
Oz’s false claims are being showcased just as public health officials are warning of a possible increase in coronavirus transmission, and as only 4 percent of Americans have received the latest omicron-focused booster vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As a GOP nominee for Senate in the nation’s fifth most-populous state, Oz has a political platform to advocate for — or against — vaccine safety in a race that is capturing national attention. If he chooses to promote vaccines, our research suggests that Oz could use his campaign to affect public health and increase Americans’ vaccination rates. In particular, he has an opportunity to reach his base supporters, who cluster on the vaccine-skeptical ideological right.
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Throwing away his shot?
Oz’s supporters tend to be more willing to accept vaccine misinformation, less likely to plan to or get vaccinated against the coronavirus; more skeptical of the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC; and less likely to worry about getting the new variants. After several years of highly politicized and polarized discussion about the pandemic, Republicans are less likely to heed the advice of health experts like Anthony S. Fauci.
But Oz, as a medical doctor and a well-known and trusted former host of a television show, could be an effective messenger for why Americans should get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Social science research finds that when people listen to leaders they trust, they are more likely to change their minds about politically and socially contentious issues. Issues relating to the pandemic are politically contentious, given that over the course of the past two years the coronavirus has become a highly polarized partisan issue. But because Oz and rank-and-file Republicans — in Pennsylvania and nationally — share a common partisan identity and stances on other hot-button political issues, they might be more likely to find him credible on vaccines. He is therefore more likely to be able to change their minds.
Who’s getting vaccinated? The answer has changed since the first wave.
Here’s how we did our research
We tested this theory in our research and find that, yes, he probably could change minds.
Here’s the background. Oz has not always supported vaccination in his daytime talk show. He occasionally let anti-vaccination individuals on his show, where they promoted scientific misinformation. He has promoted common anti-vaccination ideas, such as advising parents to unnecessarily space out childhood vaccines beyond what the CDC recommends.
And yet Oz has also, at times, used his show to promote vaccination. For instance, in a March 4, 2019, episode, after an outbreak of measles in Rockland, N.Y., Oz warned his viewers about the risks measles posed, and promoted the two-dose MMR (measles mumps rubella) vaccine as “97 percent effective.” At the time, our research team at the Annenberg Public Policy Center happened to be fielding a nationally representative longitudinal survey using the National Opinion Research Center’s AmeriSpeak panel of 3,005 respondents (1,803 of whom were available for recontact) at the University of Chicago. AmeriSpeak is a probability-based, nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, created using a two-stage stratified sampling frame that covers 97 percent of U.S. households. Panelists can respond either online or over the phone. We took advantage of this natural experiment to assess what Oz’s regular viewers believed before this episode and just afterward.
Indeed, Oz made a difference. Before this episode, only 12 percent of his viewers — the ones who knew the least about vaccines — saw routine vaccinations as low risk. Afterward, 31 percent did.
Republican candidates are increasingly sharing misinformation, research finds
Why this matters
We don’t yet know whether Oz will risk promoting vaccines and vaccine safety on the campaign trail this fall. He might have difficulty changing minds on the ideological right, after several years in which coronavirus vaccination has become politicized as part of the partisan culture wars.
Prominent anti-vaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continue to promote Oz’s anti-Fauci statements since he has chosen to leverage Republican attitudes for his political gain. But should he choose to change direction, our research suggests that when Oz talks, his audience listens.
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Dominik Stecuła (@decustecu) is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University.
Matt Motta (@matt_motta) is an assistant professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University School of Public Health.