Jeopardy! fans vow to boycott episodes hosted by Dr. Oz

We'll take unlikely — and controversial — Jeopardy! hosts for $1,000.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, known for hosting The Dr. Oz Show, will step in as guest host of Jeopardy! for two weeks starting on Monday. He's the latest in a series of temporary guest hosts the show has been bringing in since Alex Trebek's death, but let's just say fans aren't exactly thrilled with the pick.

After all, Oz has been slammed for "promoting quack treatments and cures," as a group of doctors wrote in a 2015 letter to Columbia University, and in 2014, a study found that "medical research either didn't substantiate — or flat out contradicted — more than half of Oz's recommendations," The Washington Post reported.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

So when Oz was tapped for Jeopardy! last month, some users on the show's subreddit immediately declared they'd be skipping his episodes, with one fan blasting Oz as a "charlatan champion of pseudoscience" in a highly-upvoted comment.

In February, The Ringer also heard from former Jeopardy! contestants who were none too pleased with the selection, with four-game winner Lindsey Shultz saying, "When you've made your career in the popular media by at best conveying confidence in unproven remedies — and at worst implicitly causing your audience to doubt the process the rest of us live by and have been at wit's end trying to defend for a full calendar — I'm not sure a show based around facts is the best place for you."

Ahead of Oz's first episode, a Reddit thread was devoted to the question of whether fans should tune in. Some said they'd still watch to support the contestants despite opposing Oz as host, while others said they'll tune out to register their disdain for the pick. Jeopardy! hasn't yet announced who will take over for Trebek permanently. But after this backlash, producers may have just ensured whomever they pick will receive a warm reception among fans — if only because they're not Dr. Oz.