Junk Science

Whenever there’s some “new research” being touted in the media-news-space, I often find myself switching automatically into newspeak as 99 times out of 100, what is written on these online media places has little or no bearing on what is being said. (hint look up doublethink). Tracking down the cited paper was pretty darn easy (for once) and it is currently open access - which is rare considering that it was published in the journal Tobacco Control - you know, the subsidiary of the BMJ variant.

Thanks to a fellow advocate, a new study has been brought to my attention and it is all about the myth that is secondhand smoke or in this case secondhand vapour. It is yet another blatant attempt to persuade policy makers that vaping in enclosed spaces is a bad thing, which we all know is a steaming pile bantha poo-doo.

From the abstract:

Secondhand smoke (SHS) from combustible cigarettes causes numerous diseases. Policies have been developed to prevent SHS exposure from indoor cigarette use to reduce health risks tonon-smokers. However, fewer policies have been implemented to deter electronic cigarette (ECIG) use indoors, and limited research has examined the impact of secondhand exposure to ECIG aerosol.

Last year in June, in the esteemed Tobacco Control journal there was an article talking about promoting vaping and smoking using social media with the inevitable conclusion: “Future studies should examine the extent to which Twitter users, particularly youth, notice or engage with these price promotion tweets”. Natch.

So, fast forward six months and there’s another one. Based on some of the methodology from the study last year, these researchers decided to look at an entire calendar year via a third party company Sysomos - “Proactive Social Media Monitoring”. - it’s true, they really are out to get us. Sysomos is a subscription based service that allows the subscriber to analyse their social media reach - they call it a"Social Intelligence Platform"… Unlike the previous study that used the Twitter Hosepipe API, this one went a little further. According to the Heartbeat solution page on the Sysomos website:

Unsurprisingly there has been yet another study published making a big song and dance about the “gateway” theory, claiming that “teens that use e-cigarettes are three times more likely to smoke” (taken from a headline), or that teens that use e-cigarettes are more likely to smoke.

A quick Google news search for e-cigarettes gives you 92 articles, each with a variation of the same headline and all citing the same study, or to be more precise the same press release. Some of the journalists did seek comments from Cancer Research UK, but not, it seems, Professor Linda Bauld who has already criticised the study here, and Professor Kevin Fenton from Public Health England.

Once again, another study citing “concerns” reaches the media. This time it is all about flavoured vs non-flavoured e-cigarettes, gateways and smoking all based on exposure to adverts. As David Dorn highlights on his blog post:

So asking kids whether an advert they won’t see (by law), for a thing they can’t buy (by law), in a place they can’t use them (by bye-law) is likely to make them want one is a pointless, fruitless and, frankly bloody idiotic thing to do.

By now you’ve probably heard of, or seen the latest attempt from Stanton A. Glantz to discredit e-cigarettes as a viable method for cessation. He, and co-author Sara Kalkhoran performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of research published for a set period of time to try to identify if e-cigarettes are indeed a viable tool for cessation. So what did our illustrious aeronautical engineer come up with?

Well before I begin, it’s worth pointing out two key phrases:

Although cell studies for e-cigarettes have some value, presenting them with press statements making ridiculous claims about supposed findings and interpretations makes the whole issue look more like a joke. A wise comment from Dr Farsalinos from May 2015, however these “studies” keep getting churned out some with, and some without scary press releases. But as it is that time of year when folk are more likely to make a quit attempt either due to someone buying them a starter kit for Christmas, or they’ve made a resolution to “kick the habit” at the start of the year; you wouldn’t be surprised to see the useful idiots trumpeting all kinds of daft claims about “the dangers of e-cigarettes”.

Today Sara Kalkhoran and I published “Modeling the Health Effects of Expanding e-Cigarette Sales in the United States and United Kingdom”

Is the beginning of one of Frampton’s latest blogs. It is always amusing (if a little difficult to digest his grasp of the English language) to read these as most of the time (95% CI) it’s all based on mythical hypothesis and conjecture, none of which surprises me when it comes to the “leading tobacco control activist”.

After the recent rush of positive news first from RSPH where they are trying to de-stigmatise nicotine and encourage vapouriser use (at the expense of throwing smokers out of pub gardens which I do not agree with), then from ASH that once again shows that vaping isn’t a gateway to smoking which Linda Bauld discusses at great length, all of which is incredibly positive and simply proves what we instinctively know. Electronic cigarettes, vapourisers, vapour products or whatever you want to call them (just not nic-sticks please) are not encouraging the rabid youth of today to start smoking combustible tobacco, at least not in the current regulatory climate at any rate. Who knows, that may all change.

Another day and yet another “study” that has been totally skewed to the rafters in order to push a regulatory agenda. It really can be depressing, what makes it even worse is when organisations that state “Our vision is to eliminate the use of nicotine and tobacco products by youth and young adults.” get it so badly wrong. You could be forgiven for thinking that the stats were only slightly misinterpreted, but no. These wonderful folks deliberately co-joined two completely different sets of statistics to get the results they were looking for.