Science

Just recently, the “gateway theory” has been doing the rounds yet again. I stumbled across this paper that claims the gateway theory is, in fact, real and undeniable.

As usual, the researchers are making wild claims about cause and effect, but there’s one key problem with this paper, in that it is the outcome of focus groups:

It is a form of qualitative research consisting of interviews in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.

Here we go again. More taxpayer funded “research” to look at what average, everyday people are saying on Twitter. I’ve written about this type of research before, and no doubt I’ll end up writing about it again, and again, and again ad infinitum.

The supposed aim of this spectacular pile of fetid, festering, dingo kidneys is to try and automatically classify Twitter users who tweet about e-cigarettes into “distinct categories”.

I guess this lot were bored or had a stack of cash floating around that was about to be nabbed by something worthwhile, or they had another study idea that needed a cash injection so they needed to waste cash to get more. Typical tobacco control “research” thinking troughing.

I know. I borrowed the title from jewel robber extraordinaire Dick Puddlecote. He won’t mind. It is, in fact, thanks to the illustrious Puddlecote that I became aware of another pile of utter rubbish.

A quick glance at the PubMed abstract piqued my (slightly addled) science brain. I’ve written about the very low nicotine cigarette debacle before, and that (at the time) Ms Cramer of RSPH had given a talk at the E-Cigarette Summit (2015) on the idea of “de-nicotinised” e-cigs and how, by some miracle, that led to fewer cigarettes being smoked but more vaping (the ol’ self-titration theory being proven once again).

Here we go again. Another “gateway” study has hit the media, only this time, the study originates from the UK and not the gateway crazy US.

I had prior warning that this study was coming late at night, but sadly with work being such a crapfest, I ended up reading it cross-eyed and making ridiculous mistakes in interpretation.

Before we take a closer look at the study itself, I want to draw attention to this statement in the introduction. It"s rather important.

Typology. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (sorry Mirriam-Webster, I’m English, not American; although here, both have the same definition) is “A classification according to general type, especially in archaeology, psychology, or the social sciences.”

Amusingly, it can also be defined as “The study and interpretation of types and symbols, originally especially in the Bible.” As I’m in no way going to be analysing the Bible (the greatest work of fiction ever devised), the former definition applies. Here, it refers to this paper, and after reading the abstract my initial reaction was to award it with the “Pointless Research Award”.

Here we go again. Yet another “study” that “suggests that among non-daily smokers, young adults who use e-cigarettes tend to smoke more cigarettes and to do so more frequently. Such individuals may be at greater risk for chronic tobacco use and dependence.”

Amusingly, this study was ‘accepted’ by the journal Preventative Medicine in March this year - which would have been around the time that the latest figures from the CDC was being compiled - that data was published in June.

Once again researchers are scraping the bottom of the barrel in an effort to “prove” that vaping is bad for you. Most readers will remember the worst vaping article of 2016 in The Sun - though there was an altogether bizarre story drawn from an anecdotal story on Reddit which may pip that by a nose. This time around, vaping is apparently no better - or specifically, found to be just as bad as (wait for it) - unfiltered tobacco cigarettes.

VCU researchers aim to educate the public about the dangers of e-cigarettes and produce results that would compel tighter government regulation.

This little gem comes via (yet another) ridiculously pointless “study” into the ’effects of vaping’ by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University. A study that, by the way, has taken two years and collaboration between faculty from VCU’s Biomedical Engineering and Biology departments.

The study is one in a series of seven projects by research universities across the United States that look into the potential health impacts of e-cigarettes on parts of the head, face and oral cavity. Each study is funded with part of a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institutes of Health.

There’s a new study doing the rounds at the moment. Well, I say “study” but it isn’t really. It’s yet another survey, with participants selected from eight southeastern Connecticut high schools from spring 2015. “This study is the first systematic evaluation of the use of dripping among teens,” says the lead author Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine.

That does beg the first question, why is a professor of psychiatry even looking at e-cigs? I suspect I already know the answer, as do most of my regular readers.

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 two, actually - 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.