In 2003, Steven Knope, author of The Body/Mind Connection (2000), a physician trained at Weill Cornell Medical College, and former Chair of the Department of Medicine in the Tucson, Arizona, Carondelet system, criticized Weil in a televised discussion for what he considered irresponsible advocacy of untested treatments. Simon Singh, a recognized British science writer, and Edzard Ernst, a former Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, echoed Beyerstein's criticism in their 2008 book Trick or Treatment, saying that while Weil correctly promotes exercise and smoke-free lifestyles, "much of his advice is nonsense."
Hans Baer of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Arkansas, writing in 2003, has argued that Weil's approach represents a general limitation of the holistic health/New Age movement, in its "tendenc[y] to downplay the role of social, structural, and environmental factors in the etiology of disease" in the United States, and in doing so, represents a failure to "suggest substantive remedies for improving access to health care," generally, for the "millions of people who lack any type go health insurance…"; at the same time, Baer notes (with negative connotations) that Weil instead contributes "to a long tradition of entrepreneurialism in the U.S. medical system."