Science Lies?

[midcan5]

Anyone who smokes (smoked) knows firsthand the effects. There is no need for a scientist to inform you, but then maybe you need some great swampland cheap, in which case, do I have a deal for you. And one could find a so called 'scientist' who believes just about anything and will prove it with statistics, colored slides, and diagrams galore. I quit long ago, but I still remember getting up and clearing my throat before the first smoke. And if it can do it to the individual surely the person nearby will be affected. Plus isn't it great to come home from a restaurant and not smell like an ashtray? And look at the faces of long time smokers, me I still look like a baby - I wish!

 

[Madeline]

Let's leave off cigarettes and discuss something that may be more neutral, okay?

SmarterThanHick, the intersection between science and criminal law intrigues me very much, but I will also honor your request that we set that aside for now as well.

The book in the Op discussed three scenarios besides cigarettes:

We can discuss any of them, but low level radon seems likely to be a subject none of us are passionate about.

BTW, has anyone read "Hyping Health Risks"? I have not; just a book review.

 

[Gadawg73]

Anyone read "Hyping Health Risks" by Geoffrey Kabar?

Hyping Health Risks provides a valuable counterpoint to the confusion and paranoia that seems to grow proportionate to the constant barrage of health risk studies. Examining four of the most persistent and controversial issues in public health, Kabat's lucid and well-written book gives the lay reader all the basic concepts and epidemiological tools she needs to understand the available evidence. His presentation allows us to better discriminate between what matters to our health and what matters to the 'hypers'-a wide array of stakeholders, some well-intentioned, some much less so. -- Ernest Drucker, Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Geoffrey C. Kabat, a respected epidemiologist, provides an insider's account of how a number of ostensible health hazards have been blown out of proportion. While we face a daily barrage of health scares, Kabat cuts through the confusion and provides a lucid and rigorous rationale for rejecting much of the fear culture that permeates our society. -- Shelly Ungar, University of Toronto

With clarity and dispassion, Geoffrey C. Kabat challenges widespread beliefs that secondhand smoke, low levels of radon, and other ostensible environmental nemeses are certain killers. In making his case, Kabat draws extensively on scientific evidence while shunning rhetoric and political posturing. The result is an admirable search for scientific truth amid a sea of conflicting and often uninformed opinions. -- Leonard Cole, Rutgers University

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Hyping-Health-Risks-Environmental-Epidemiology/dp/0231141483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275208074&sr=1-1]Amazon.com: Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of…[/ame]


What caught my eye when I read the book review in "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine was that the "proof" that second hand smoke kills does not exist, according to the author. Not only do I smoke, but I have watched several businesses in my neighborhood go under as a result of the recent smoking ban here. All this nagging and misery for naught?

Makes me mad enough to hit someone.

Born in 1957 and having lived through the 60's and 70's I have NO sympathy for smokers being banned. You see in the 60's and 70's there were no NONE smoking areas. Smokers would light up anywhere they pleased.

I happen to dislike cigarette smoke, having had to live through it as a child both parents smoked.

The pendulum as swung live with it till it swings back again.

Well said.
People that smoke hate themselves.

 

[industry7]

Yet we DON'T know how second hand smoke might cause disease?

Actually we know how second hand smoke causes dieases...

wait for it...

you breath it in.

 

[Gadawg73]

Smoking cigarettes adds 40% more to the health care costs of EVERY American over their lifetime that smoke.
Over 400,000 deaths a year from lung disease related to smoking. Life expectancy for non smokers is 8 years longer for women and 6 for men.
If one does not know that breathing into the lungs ANY form of smoke is bad for you then they are either in denial or have an IQ less than 70.

 

[IanC]

an interesting factoid about smoking...those who quit don't have a lower cancer rate than those who continue to use. I don't think their life expectancy improved to a statistical significance either but I may not be remembering correctly on that.

which brings up two interesting questions. are the people who smoke already more likely to become ill and die sooner, even before they start smoking? and two, why have the (large) studies showing these politically incorrect results been flushed down the memory hole?

 

[antagon]

Abstract

Several major meta-analyses have concluded that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) increases the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) by about 25% among never smokers. However, these reviews have excluded a large portion of the epidemiologic evidence on questionable grounds and have been inconsistent in the selection of the results that are included. We conducted an updated meta-analysis and critique of the evidence on ETS exposure and its relationship to death from CHD among never smokers. Our focus is on the U. S. cohort studies, which provide the vast majority of the available evidence. ETS exposure is assessed in terms of spousal smoking, self-reported estimates, and personal monitoring. The epidemiologic results are summarized by means of overall relative risks and dose-response relationships. The methodological issues of publication bias, exposure misclassification, and confounding are discussed. Several large studies indicate that spousal smoking history is a valid measure of relative exposure to ETS, particularly for females. Personal monitoring of nonsmokers indicates that their average ETS exposure from a smoking spouse is equivalent in terms of nicotine exposure to smoking less than 0.1 cigarettes per day. When all relevant studies are included in the meta-analysis and results are appropriately combined, current or ever exposure to ETS, as approximated by spousal smoking, is associated with roughly a 5% increased risk of death from CHD in never smokers. Furthermore, there is no dose-response relationship and no elevated risk associated with the highest level of ETS exposure in males or females. An objective assessment of the available epidemiologic evidence indicates that the association of ETS with CHD death in U. S. never smokers is very weak. Previous assessments appear to have overestimated the strength of the association.

i'm not sure what he was able to show about publication bias in the alternative studies which have shown increased incidence of morbidity in the spouses, but i would weigh in-situ findings over the supposed impact conclusions at which the lab results arrived.

a big game in research science is the ability to conjure contrarian results from relatively legit analysis. you get a pool of funding from the conservative trends inundated by new, massing consensus conclusions (here the cigarette lobbies), and all to yourself. by taking the analysis into the lab, and trying to isolate factors from co-factors which cant all be accounted for or understood, rather than judging holistic impact of the factors in-situ, this contrarian result is inferior to the mainstream findings, i'd say.

 

[IanC]

Over the next decade the results of other similar trials appeared. It had been argued that if an improvement in one life-style factor, smoking, were of benefit, then an improvement in several - eg smoking, diet and exercise - should produce even clearer benefits. And so appeared the results of the whimsically acronymed Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial or MRFIT, with its 12,886 American subjects. Similarly, in Europe 60,881 subjects in four countries took part in the WHO Collaborative Trial. In Sweden the Goteborg study had 30,022 subjects. These were enormously expensive, wide-spread and time-consuming experiments. In all, there were 6 such trials with a total of over a hundred thousand subjects each engaged for an average of 7.4 years, a grand total of nearly 800,000 subject-years. The results of all were uniform, forthright and unequivocal: giving up smoking, even when fortified by improved diet and exercise, produced no increase in life expectancy. Nor was there any change in the death rate for heart disease or for cancer. A decade of expensive and protracted research had produced a quite unexpected result

The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking

don't get me wrong, I think smoking is unhealthy. I just don't think the science is as clear cut as many people think (or wish) it is.

It may now be apparent why there is such a general belief that smoking is dangerously harmful. There are 3 reasons. First, studies which in any other area of science would be rejected as second-rate and inferior but which support antismoking are accepted as first-rate. Second, studies which are conducted according to orthodox and rigorous design but which do not support the idea that smoking is harmful are not merely ignored but suppressed. Third, authorities who are duty-bound to represent the truth have failed to do so and have presented not just untruths but the reverse of the truth.

It may be argued that this is news about an old and settled subject. And who cares about smoking anyway. But smoking is really a secondary issue. The primary issue is the integrity of science. This has no use-by date. When the processes of science are misused, even if for what seems a good reason, science and its practitioners are alike degraded.

 

[antagon]

By stirct definition science done propely can not lie. Science as most people think of it is a set of outcomes in a given circumstance, if you do X while Y and Z are going on XX will occur. So no it can't lie, it can and often is misinterpreted or misreppresentd in order to further personal or politcal goals/desires. That is the downfalll of science, it requires people to interpret it.

that goes too far to call human interpretation the downfall of science, and the presumption that science is founded on strict 'xyz' reductions isn't too fitting either.

i would say that science calls on human imagination to draw direction and analysis of basic observations: things fall when lifted and let go; giving rise to a theory or hypothesis: there is a force at play, which tugs on all objects toward the earth; which in turn directs detailed analysis of the subject from the perspective of the hypothesis.

this is why we cant simply cut computers loose on science at present. while they play important roles in computing ever-more accurate definitions for phenomena like gravity, they don't posses the wherewithal to make the observation and draw preliminary conclusions on their own.

of course, humanity will put forward conclusions with bias to opinion or aims other than impartial truth, but scientific exploration of these conclusions will lend insight to that truth, notwithstanding.

 

[IanC]

But leave aside smoking for the moment. I am curious about the Land Of Science -- it is not a place I know well. The Land Of Statistics is full of lies, of polls designed from the get-go to arrive at a desired result. I wonder if this can also be done in science? And if it can, do such scientific tales get told in the major peer-review journals? Do the editorial boards of such journals ever reject an article that is scientifically sound because the results are not palatable to them?

of course they do. Climategate is a stark example of politically gerrymandered peer review.

another example is 'stereotype threat'. there have been many studies done on it but only the ones supporting the hypothesis get published, the others just die on the vine due to lack of interest and general commitment to political correctness.

 

[Madeline]

I feel so vindicated!

He he he.......

So what about radon? I have paid for those damned tests several times now. Was the threat exagerrated?

 

[IanC]

I feel so vindicated!

He he he.......

So what about radon? I have paid for those damned tests several times now. Was the threat exagerrated?

I know next to nothing about radon, except that it is a noble element. I just checked the half life....less than 4 days, so it is very radioactive. best to stay away from it.

plutonium has more serious by-products but its half life is 80+ days.

 

[editec]

I don't doubt that second hand smoke is unhealthy.

I merely doubt that they can prove how unhealthy is really is.

I am particularly sceptical when some idots informs us (for example) that X thousand people are going to die from second hand smoke.

Sounds like pure conjucture (disguised as statstically analysis) to me.

 

[FA_Q2]

I would like to add that statistical analysis is not a science and can never be. It is the inherent problem with the medical field that science cannot help. Some of the basic principals are there but science requires the control of variables. Statistics is used in leu when the variables are not controllable (as in life) but are a poor substitute for facts. There are millions of tiny factors that occur in our lives daily, some we know about and some we do not. You cannot account for all of these variables and will never have a complete picture of the facts. It is very scary when you get in the thick of it because you find out that doctors really do not know what they are doing but are feeling around in the dark with a very dim light.

 

[Madeline]

I feel so vindicated!

He he he.......

So what about radon? I have paid for those damned tests several times now. Was the threat exagerrated?

I know next to nothing about radon, except that it is a noble element. I just checked the half life....less than 4 days, so it is very radioactive. best to stay away from it.

plutonium has more serious by-products but its half life is 80+ days.

I thought radon was a gas? Help!

 

[IanC]

all the nobles are gases, helium, neon, argon, etc. they don't react chemically. Radon is a byproduct of the breakdown of uranium but the problem IS that it is a gas and doesn't react with any thing. it diffuses out and into peoples' lungs, where it continues the radioactive decay cascade, releasing alpha and beta particles until it finally turns to Lead.

 

[Gadawg73]

Madeline, if you put enough effort into working to quit taking drugs instead of defending your right to our $ to treat your illnesses you would be drug free immediately.

 

[froggy]

No shit. Second-hand smoke was all a load.

Who'd a fuckin' thunk it? And do you know 94% of the fartsniffs who were trying to sell this shit were dems?

Pushed by insurance lobbyist.

 

[Madeline]

Madeline, if you put enough effort into working to quit taking drugs instead of defending your right to our $ to treat your illnesses you would be drug free immediately.

I have resisted defrauding anyone most of my life. Why do you think I take drugs, Gadawg? My life is not that exciting, I assure you.

 

[Gadawg73]

Madeline, if you put enough effort into working to quit taking drugs instead of defending your right to our $ to treat your illnesses you would be drug free immediately.

I have resisted defrauding anyone most of my life. Why do you think I take drugs, Gadawg? My life is not that exciting, I assure you.

I thought you stated you were a smoker.
Sorry if I was wrong.