On his show last week Dr. Oz tried to scare us about arsenic in apple juice. It was a feat of ratings-driven fear-mongering that was shameful even by daytime TV standards. His show tested various brands of apple juice for arsenic, announced that the levels were too high, and concluded that we should all be worried.

This week Dr. Oz published an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune explaining that he was simply trying to "raise an alarm" about food safety and that "we need more stringent restrictions on arsenic in fruit juice."
Huh? He said he has no concerns about the safety of juice. There's no evidence that arsenic levels in juices (or in any other food or beverage) are dangerous and no evidence that anyone is getting arsenic toxicity from their diet. Other than that, he has a good point, or at least a very popular show.
But why did his ploy work? Why did he get so much attention? Why didn't the couple of million people (!) who watch his show search the CDC or FDA websites about arsenic, yawn slowly, and move on to a different subject? Why didn't they discover on their own that the scariest thing about apple juice is the calories? Overweight people shouldn't touch the stuff. After decades of drinking fruit juices daily they might suffer the complications of diabetes, but they would still have no effects from the arsenic.
Why would we take the word of a TV entertainer and thoracic surgeon about food safety instead of the opinion of people with PhDs in biochemistry who spend their careers keeping food safe? Like me, Dr. Oz last studied biochemistry as an undergraduate. The only thing his training prepares him to answer about apple juice is, "How long before my heart surgery can I have anything to drink?"
For better or for worse, we're hard-wired to pay attention to scary stuff. So a reasoned explanation that everything is OK will never get as much attention as a bogus warning that you're poisoning your children. As an open society we are being challenged to learn to give credibility to those who have earned it and ignore those who have abused our trust. Can we do it?
