Science

The long list of methodological errors in the junk science of passive smoke (ETS)

1. The claims of exposure are not authentic. Exposure is not measured. The studies actually measure nothing, but rely on the vague and grossly imprecise recall of queried subjects who attempt to evoke in a few minutes their individual lifetime memories of passive smoking exposure.
2. Errors in individual exposure recollection, most likely large, are unknown ,and are unknowable. Digitized numerical claims of exposure are, therefore, incongruous and impermissible. Their numerical representation gives an impression of reliability and precision that is demonstrably false and misleading.
3. A recall bias has been demonstrated to be larger in subjects, who are more likely to amplify their recall of passive smoking exposure as a justification for their disease, with lung cancer or cardio vascular disease.
4. A misclassification bias has been demonstrated to be larger in subjects with lung cancer or cardio vascular disease because they are more likely than healthy subjects to classify themselves as nonsmokers.
5. A mismatch error of cases and controls is inevitable because the groups compared are not homogeneous and differ in many characteristics other than recall of passive smoking exposure.
6. Confounding errors by definition are likely to be more prevalent among lung cancer and cardio vascular disease cases. Confounders are all other known and unknown potential causes of lung cancer and cardio vascular disease that interfere with the specific attribution of risk to passive smoking.
7. Probable errors of disease diagnosis are seldom addressed by passive smoking studies.
8. Publication errors have been found to favor the publication of studies that claim associations of increased risk.
9. Statistical errors of sampling and statistical significance are grossly inconsistent among passive smoking studies owing to the feeble differentials of exposure recall and the small number of subjects in each study. A majority of studies have not reached statistical significance. In any event, significant or not, the statistical indices of all passive smoking studies are illusory because they are derived from the grossly illusory and misleading numerical renderings of vague individual exposure recalls.
10. Results from different studies have not been consistent and reproducible.
11. Epidemiologic criteria of causal inference (the Hill criteria) are not met by passive smoking studies.
12. Attempts to summarize the results of different studies by meta-analysis statistical techniques are illegitimate. Results are obtained by pooling heterogeneous and selected studies, giving arbitrary preferential weights to certain studies, which, in any case, are handicapped by the sources of error listed above.

What must an epidemiologic study warrant?

1. A study must warrant that its numerical representations of individual lifetime ETS exposure recalls are true measures of actual exposures.
2. A study must warrant that an exposure recall bias affects cases and control groups, and exposed and non-exposed groups at the same rate.
3. A study must warrant that subject selection and misclassification biases affect cases and control groups, and exposed and non-exposed groups at the same rate.
4. A study must warrant that known causal confounders affect cases and control groups, and exposed and non-exposed groups at the same rate.
5. A study must warrant the accuracy of pathological and diagnostic records.
6. The results from different studies addressing the same subject must be consistently reproducible. In any study, the statistical margin of error of reported risks should reach no less than the 95% level of significance.
7. If the above criteria are met, the results of a study should also be consistent with Hill's criteria of causality. (See below)
8. Meta-analysis summations shall not be credible unless performed on the basis of all available studies. Such studies also must be of homogeneous design and conduct, and must have met the above criteria of validity.

More on Forces International.

Science by Press Release

A trick which the tobacco control industry often uses is to spread a press release before a study is being published in their (often biased) medical journals. This has quite some advantages for a scientist: when the always uncritical journalists report on the study they only have the Press Release to report on, following the preconcerted conclusions in the press release. Tobacco control scientists know that after having published on the study, journalists never go back to read the real study in the medical journal. So if the design of the study or the conclusions in the real study are different from the press release, there will never be a rectification.

Competing interests

Studies seldom declare the author's competing interest. That's why on this site we have published the long list of scientists having received sponsorship from Big Pharma.

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Noteworthy

• An Overview

Click here for an essay providing insight, particularly regarding lung cancer, on the plain evidence, and the fatally false perspective of Tobacco Control, on the issue of tobacco and health.

• James Repace, Junk Scientist Extraordinaire

James Repace, an anti-smoker trained in physics and a great darling of the Tobacco Control movement, has performed some of its most comical anti-scientific pratfalls. He is well known for his vituperative reactions to the ridicule he thus engenders (from the public generally but which he likes to blame on evilly inspired "industry moles"). Some examples of his scientific slapstick at these links: Bouncing Body Counts - Courtroom Cut-up - Off with Their Tongues.

• Smoking Ban "Miracles"

In the US and elsewhere, anti-smoker agencies have adopted the trick of releasing "studies" (propaganda based on small samples) purporting that smoking bans reduce hospitalizations for heart attacks or other conditions. This nonsense has been referred to by ban proponents as "the Helena miracle", "the Scottish miracle", etc., ad nauseum. In 2010 researchers for the Rand Corporation performed a comprehensive study of the question, reporting that "smoking bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases. ...large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a smoking ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature." Click here for study abstract.