The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle: Torturing Statistics

It must be something about this time of year for all the idiotic anti-vaping, anti-nicotine or anti-anything, to crawl out from under whatever rock they’ve been hiding under and spout a tranche of utter bullshit before scuttling back to their safe space, complete with a shiny new grant to cook up more bullshit.

Today saw the on-line release of three, well actually two – one of them was an opinion piece – papers in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It seems that AAP are ever so friendly with a certain rotund “professor” at UCSF, as one of these papers is his.

Of course, his paper doesn’t add anything meaningful to the science already out there. All this one does is rehash the figures and stats from the National Youth Tobacco Survey. Up until 2014. It doesn’t even take into account the data collected in the last two years. There’s a reason for that of course; it’d skew his preconception.

The second of the three papers, laughingly entitled “Adolescent Risk Behaviors and Use of Electronic Vapor Products and Cigarettes” concludes that those who smoke or vape or even dual-use are more likely to take risks. Well, no fucking shit Sherlock!

Good grief, are these opponents (or proponents of an over-exaggerated implementation of the Precautionary Principle) really that stuck for ideas on how to try and nix the e-cigarette market? Or is it just a case that the NIH has so much loose cash sloshing around that it needs to spend before its next budget?

Aside from the grandiose claim of:

In the “what this study adds” co-authored by the rotund rascal, it is quite simply an exercise in torturing data to fit a particular narrative – as one comes to expect from the US.

Once again, the definitions give the rotund reaver broad scope to manipulate the data as he sees fit. But it gets worse than that:

In short, if there was missing data were still considered smokers or vapers. I suppose it didn’t occur to the rotund reaver to think that missing data could suggest that the participant didn’t smoke or vape at all? Of course not, that doesn’t fit the narrative.

If that was the only flaw, I’d stop there. But it isn’t. This is the Rotund Reaver at his finest ladies and gents!

In other words, we took additional data (from outside the NYTS) and mixed them together. Two data sources folks! Confounding abound! But this is the Rotund Reaver, he of course adjusted for those with regression analyses as if that solves everything!

That data was then used to create a model “to estimate the probability that e-cigarette users would have initiated nicotine use with cigarettes” in other words, looking for the gateway effect. Again. It’s become something of an obsession with the Rotund Reaver.

All the data from the CDC, the Monitoring the Future survey and the NYTS all show a decline in traditional cigarette smoking. Even at the time of introduction of e-cigarettes to the US in 2009, there had been a marked decline in the prevalence rate – which the Rotund Reaver claims isn’t significant. To be fair, it isn’t that significant as the smoking rate had been on a decline for years prior to 2009, but from 2011 onward the prevalence rate declined even more, yet you wouldn’t believe it from the media articles.

Yet the claim made in the conclusion:

Is, as always, not supported by the data, as I’ve written about before. This is simply a case of torturing stats to fit a narrative.

The second of the three isn’t that much better. The opening line of the abstract gives away the tone of the paper:

Along with the “what this study adds”:

So? Kids takes risks. Deal with it. You can’t wrap the little fuckers up in cotton wool for the rest of their lives, or it leads to Generation Snowflake. Oh wait. Never mind, we’re already at that point.

Good grief! Does anyone in academia in the US actually understand the subject they are investigating? Anyone?

Back in 2015, some intrepid academic types tried to claim there was a link between drinking and smoking/vaping. This is along those very same lines.

Also, I suspect there might be some jealousy involved:

But then, what do I know?

Teens will experiment with risky behaviour, it’s all part of growing up which renders the final line of this paper:

Completely meaningless. The entire conclusion section is dedicated to proposing population-level interventions to prevent risky behaviour. Risk is a part of growing up and should never be subject to intervention.

(image credit Stefano Carnevali/shutterstock.com)