Under great
anti-smoker bravado and orchestrated cheers, a band of anti-tobacco
'researchers', at the University of Dundee, Scotland, have published a piece of
agitational science. This time the claim is that pub workers' lives have been
saved due to the smoking ban recently foisted upon the hapless Scots.
Their 'study' has been published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), on october 11 2006.
The abstract of the
study is here.
I do not have the entire 'study'. Never mind, I can still comment on this
anti-tobacco bigotry based on the abstract. Let me iterate:
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There is no control group in the study. We do
not know if the effects would have occured in the absence of a smoking ban.
-
In the accompanying
press release
the university reveals that 'astmathics were specifically targeted'. Thus,
whatever 'findings' the quack researchers came up with, they are not
representative of pub workers nor the population in general.
-
The researchers have bragged far and wide
that their 'study' is the largest of its kind. And just how large do you
imagine their study is? 77 subjects! What a blockbuster that must have been.
-
The 'study' is full of change rates and
confidence intervals. These types of data are typical for epidemiological
studies, but the 'study' is not epidemiology. Relative risks and confidence
intervals are not for breathalizer tests. This detail reveals what
pseudoscience the 'study' is.
-
The 'study' took place from February to June
2006. The 'amazing' results in breathing ability improvement are most probably
due to the change in weather. Certainly the weather factor cannot be ruled out
as the only factor being measured in the 'study'.
-
Junk science questionnaires attribute
'improvement' of 'health' from 80 % to 87 %. With the amount of propaganda
thrown at bewildered non-smoking pub workers, it would be no surprise that
removing the alleged 'deadly' smoke could produce a psycologically induced
improvement, measured in the 'questionnaires'.
-
The only credible measurement is a decrease
in the amount of cotinine found in the pub workers' blood. Surprisingly
enough, there is not much of a drop in cotinine. Not even half the cotinine is
removed due to the 'protective' ban.
-
The study started with 105 subjects and in
the space of a few months was reduced to only 77. What happened to the 28
missing? Did they die prematurely of exposure to tobacco smoke before the
anti-tobacco crusader's smoking ban could have saved them? Did the 10 involved
researchers lose track of 28 of their subjects? Or were the 28 missing
subjects simply ousted from the study, because their inclusion would have made
the study's results less 'dramatic'?
From an
article
on the 'study' we see that it is being used to 'urge' a faster ban in England.
The 'study' is a thinly disguised piece of agitational propaganda.
The people-banning instigators who have backed and are promoting this piece of
trash should be ashamed. They have manufactured a subtle piece of hate
mongering, aimed at whipping up the pogrom against smokers. Shame be onto them.
Perhaps the antismoking bigots should spend more time reading verdicts from
Scottish courts. Might I reccomend reading Lord Nimmo Smiths
scathing verdict,
cast on may 31, 2005, in the case of Mrs. McTear vs Imperial Tobacco Limited.
Richard Doll presented the court with 'evidence' that smoking tobacco can cause
lung cancer. Lord Nimmo Smith declared that he had seen no such evidence! From
section 6.166 of the proceedings, I quote:
|
[6.166] Mr
McEachran's main argument, as I understood it, was that the conclusion
that cigarette smoking could cause lung cancer had met with general
acceptance in the scientific community by the late 1950s, was accepted by
the media in the 1970s, was taught at medical schools and reflected in
textbooks, and could be seen stated in a series of substantial
multi-disciplinary reports, which he called the "multi-doctor studies",
listed at para.[6.30], to the extent that the conclusions of IARC 1986 had
never been challenged. This is all very well, but I have to say that I am
reminded of the Bellman in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark,
who said: "What I tell you three times is true". But however often
a conclusion may be repeated, it is only as sound as the research on which
it is based, and of this I have seen none. However eminent and numerous
the authors of a report may be, however many articles they may have read
before preparing their texts, however many pages their reports may run to,
are to no avail if I am then shown no more than the conclusions reached
after all this effort. It is no good to tell me that a report is 400 or
600 pages long, and indeed to ask me to weigh the report in my hand, as Mr
McEachran at one time asked me to do with UKHC 2000 Vol.II, and its list
of references extends to several hundred items, without letting me see any
of the text on which the conclusions are based. Indeed, as Mr Jones
pointed out, the very length of a report may emphasise the
inappropriateness of going simply to its conclusions: the length shows how
much ground there was to cover before the conclusions could be stated. The
conclusions, taken on their own, are no more than oracular pronouncements. |
Enough about these Dundee Dunces. |
