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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 01/13/2009 : 13:07:57 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
So anything you don't agree with is nothing more than a "talking point." Got it. |
And people who disagree with you are "nicotine nannies," "parrots" or maybe "captain nitpick."
The fact of the matter is that to the Cato Institute and Steven Milloy, this is a political issue, and not a scientific one. As such, "talking points" is a completely valid descriptor. There's very little science within the Libertarian anti-anti-smoking campaign.| BTW, if you check your logical fallacies dictionary, I'm sure you'll find "attacking the messenger" in there somewhere. |
And I also see argument ad hominem in there, too.Ah, a telephone survery. What does that remind me of? Anyway...Fifty-nine (70%) of the 84 studies had some unpublished results. The reasons stated most frequently for unpublished results were ongoing data collection or analysis (n=33 times), lack of time (n=26), and competing priorities (n=11), such as other recently funded studies, studies where passive smoking was a minor component, and career changes. Statistically nonsignificant results were cited as a reason for failure to publish for only 2 studies. One investigator stated that they chose a less prestigious journal to publish their statistically nonsignificant results. Four manuscripts (2 with statistically significant and 2 with statistically nonsignificant results) resulting from 3 studies were unpublished because they had been rejected from a journal. These manuscripts were being resubmitted. I think it's hysterical when a person's own evidence largely undermines his own claims.| Publication bias effects studies that show no increase in risk, not just for SHS, but for anything. It's not surprising that studies to fight woo-woo are getting published. What would be really surprising is if studies that show something contrary to the "common knowledge"... got published. |
Um, the example I gave was of "common knowledge" being shot down by published studies which found no effect. Or do you think that "woo-woo" isn't that widespread?| But because the majority of such studies are funded by anti-smokers... |
Where's the evidence for that assertion?| Since you put so much faith in "common knowledge" I'd have to guess you believe in angels, devils, gods, and the like. |
WTF? No, really: what the hell are you talking about? When did I ever put "faith" in "common knowledge?"| Statistically significant, yes, but given the limitations and errors built into every study (recall bias, confounders, etc) how accurate or useful is a number that small, especially when you add in the first rule of statistics: Correlation does not equal causation. |
You speak like a statistician, but you refuse to correct your earlier obvious bullshit. Instead, you just dig yourself deeper.| "As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication." - Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine" |
Ah, I already posted a link to a refutation of that little thing."My basic rule is if the relative risk isn't at least 3 or 4, forget it." - Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration.
"Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or the effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident." - The National Cancer Institute
"An association is generally considered weak if the odds ratio [relative risk] is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer." - Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist |
Wow, a bunch of quotes without context or proper references. That's a good way to argue.| Ah, yes, the delightful and lovely meta-analysis, the easiest kind of study to fake and manipulate. |
That line doesn't work on anyone, you know. No matter how many times you repeat it.| The term meta-analysis always sets off my bullshit meter. |
As does the term "nicotine nanny" for mine.| I'm also waiting for someone to explain how inhaling the smoke of six to twelve cigarettes per year can all the ills attributed to SHS. |
You haven't said what those "ills" are, so you're setting up conditions in which you'll never hear what you say you are waiting for. It's a brilliant rhetorical strategy: create a challenge that you know nobody will even try to meet, so later you can declare "victory" even though you did nothing but wrongly assume that cigarette smoke acts as a poison.
Go ahead: ask us for the names of three people who died from SHS.  |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/13/2009 : 15:24:43 [Permalink]
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I found this over at the CDC site a little bit ago:
Reduced Hospitalizations for Acute Myocardial Infarction After Implementation of a Smoke-Free Ordinance
It's just one report (I don't know if it was funded by anti-smoking zealots or not), but the conclusions are certainly interesting. |
| Edited by - Cuneiformist on 01/13/2009 15:25:16 |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 01/13/2009 : 17:52:49 [Permalink]
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| Good job Tom, nice analysis! |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 01/13/2009 : 19:48:47 [Permalink]
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Hittman wrote: | A pack a day smoker directly inhales 7300 cigarettes a year, and it takes 20-30 years for it to hurt him, if it does. |
Anyone who has been a pack a day smoker for even a few months knows that's not true. Withdrawal alone is a pretty uncomfortable thing to experience for both the smoker and the people around the smoker, and every regular smoker will have to stop smoking at some point for an extended period of time, such as if they get a respiratory infection or similar illness or if they are on a long plane ride. And while the high of smoking is fun, once one is a regular smoker, the high is the norm and one must suffer withdrawal and frustrating cravings for months or even years after quitting. I rarely meet a smoker who doesn't want to quit. And yet they still smoke. Do you consider addiction to not be a form of harm or an ill effect?
There are also issues of smoking causing chronic illness or making normal common illness worse. The common cold is more unpleasant and often much worse if one is a smoker. I'm convinced regular smoking does harm to the immune system, even if it is only in the shorterm while the person is a smoker. And there seems to be some evidence to support this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6633406
Here's an example of a study concluding that smoking among young, healthy people made them less healthy in a measurable way: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1748407
| CONCLUSIONS—In this young healthy population, substantial fractions of hospitalisations and lost workdays were attributable to current smoking, particularly among men. |
Smoking also raising blood pressure causing other increased health risks, depending on the health of the individual.
I was a smoker, and while the longterm possibility of developing cancer or emphysema frightened me, if it hadn't been for the shorterm "ill effects" I probably wouldn't have cut down so much and probably would have quit a lot later.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 01/13/2009 : 20:02:12 [Permalink]
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So back to the topic of third hand smoke. I just read this article in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/health/research/03smoke.html
And I gotta agree with Hittman that this is total bullshit. And the journalist does nothing to show any critical thinking or healthy skepticism.
The article starts out introducing some doctors who have coined a new term "third hand smoke" and claim it is dangerous, but the articles cites nothing which indicates that third hand smoke is in fact having a quantifiable impact on the health of non-smokers. Indeed, just as Hittman said, they instead report about a phone survey about peoples' opinions regarding third hand smoke: | But far fewer of those surveyed were aware of the risks of third-hand smoke. Since the term is so new, the researchers asked people if they agreed with the statement that “breathing air in a room today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of infants and children.” Only 65 percent of nonsmokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed with that statement, which researchers interpreted as acknowledgement of the risks of third-hand smoke. |
The final paragraph names all the scary chemicals contained in third hand smoke, including arsenic and lead. Of course there are toxic materials found everywhere. Whether they are harmful to any person from an adult to a toddler depends on how much they are exposed to. Just about anything is poisonous if you consume enough of it.
I love this line:
| “Your nose isn't lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: 'Get away.'” |
Sheesh, I guess I better stay away from my brother after he works out at the gym - I might get cancer! |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 01/13/2009 20:02:41 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 01/13/2009 : 20:22:31 [Permalink]
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Third hand smoke on NPR (about 8 minutes long): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99160075&ft=1&f=1007
The interviewee, Jonathan Winickoff, is the guy that did the phone survey of peoples' opinions about the potential harm that third hand smoke does.
This is much more skeptical than the NY Times article starting with the title which poses it as a question. The interviewer asked about measuring the amounts, asking how much of it is likely to get in peoples' bodies, and asks about studies directly studying harm, and the interviewee says that such studies exist but never references them in any way even though he references other things very specifically.
The interviewee also says that the discussion over the "toxicity" is over (the interviewer IMO should have been harder on him here) and we need to start looking at remedies, including his call for all apartments with multiple tenets be smoke free by law.
He does keep playing the "children" card. It is pretty annoying and extreme. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 01/13/2009 20:24:45 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
 Posted - 01/13/2009 : 22:41:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
So is this a "scare" being perpetrated by just one guy?
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Well, two really, if you count Hittman. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/14/2009 : 03:14:43 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by BigPapaSmurf
Nice work Tom, looks like you have a few too many [ /quote]s in there... |
Thanks, fixed.
One thing, can't repeated exposure also reduce reaction in some cases?
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It can. It's still a problem in the study of allergies when sensitization and desensitization occurs. Or at least it was when I last checked up on the topic, but that is admittedly about 4 years ago. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
| Edited by - tomk80 on 01/14/2009 03:20:32 |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/14/2009 : 03:23:14 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
So is this a "scare" being perpetrated by just one guy?
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It might of course become a scare if more persons listen to it. I don't think they will. Measures against smoking are already widely implemented and the SHS is much more easy to grasp than third hand smoke will ever be. I don't think we'll here much about it in the future. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/14/2009 : 11:19:03 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by tomk80
...the SHS is much more easy to grasp than third hand smoke will ever be. |
I'm not sure about that. People have gotten plenty scared about electromagnetic fields from power lines and cellphones. And vaccines, too. Come to think of it, the mercury-in-vaccines scare can pretty much be credited to a single person.
Really, "Third-hand smoke" (THS) is just like SHS, except one can't see it, and often one can't smell it, either. That puts it in the same category as lead-based paint or melamine-laced pet foods or salmonella-infected peanut butter. Except all of those pose clear dangers, while THS's dangers appear to be simply hypothetical.
How many cigarettes must be smoked in a room before its carpet would become a danger to children or pets per EPA guidelines? Surely unsmoked-over carpets contain some of those same contaminants, simply because they're not manufactured, stored and transported in clean-room style environments. Hell, Polonium is a daughter product of indoor Radon gas. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/14/2009 : 13:02:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by tomk80
...the SHS is much more easy to grasp than third hand smoke will ever be. |
I'm not sure about that. People have gotten plenty scared about electromagnetic fields from power lines and cellphones. And vaccines, too. Come to think of it, the mercury-in-vaccines scare can pretty much be credited to a single person.
Really, "Third-hand smoke" (THS) is just like SHS, except one can't see it, and often one can't smell it, either. That puts it in the same category as lead-based paint or melamine-laced pet foods or salmonella-infected peanut butter. Except all of those pose clear dangers, while THS's dangers appear to be simply hypothetical.
How many cigarettes must be smoked in a room before its carpet would become a danger to children or pets per EPA guidelines? Surely unsmoked-over carpets contain some of those same contaminants, simply because they're not manufactured, stored and transported in clean-room style environments. Hell, Polonium is a daughter product of indoor Radon gas.
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Perhaps you're right, I don't know. Note that I don't think it cannot develop into some kind of scare because it is pushed by one person. In the Netherlands, the trouble around EMF is pretty much kept alive by a relatively small group of people (of course, the current research doesn't help much in that. But since the whole commotion around EMF has made my new job possible, I'm not complaining ). 
I still think that the THS issue will not gain as much traction. It is one thing to tell cool uncle Joe to not smoke in the house (just like it's okay to complain about the antenna in your neighborhood or the wind turbine in your backyard), it's another to tell him he can't come and visit anymore.
edited to add: thinking about it a bit more, when I was a kid I used to go play a lot with some kids who's parents were chain smokers. The smell of cigarettes was everywhere in that house. Don't know how quickly that clears away if such people would move. People get worried quickly if they smell something. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
| Edited by - tomk80 on 01/14/2009 13:05:43 |
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Hittman
Skeptic Friend
134 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 07:30:59 [Permalink]
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| But there is a good reason to use female-only studies, namely that men are more likely to smoke than women. |
That wasn't the criteria for the selection. They ranked studies with a complex tier system. Tier one, the highest rating, contained five studies. Tier 2 had 15, tier 3 had 5 and tier 4 had five. Tier four studies were deemed to be unacceptable for the study. (Page 5-61 of the study.) They then selected eight studies, and didn't' really explain why those eight were selected. Then they added three more on the basis that it wouldn't change their numbers!
Page 6-16 contains this paragraph: "This section calculates the EST ETS-attributable US long cancer mortality estimates based on the combined relative risk estimate (RR2 = 1.19) derived in chapter 5 for the 11 US studies. Alternative, the estimate from just the combined tier 1 and tier 2 studies (RR2 = 1.22 from eight of the 11, see Table 5-17) could have been used because these eight studies were assessed on having the grater utility in evaluation the long cancer risks from ETS; however, the results would have been virtually the same because the relative risk estimates are so similar. It was therefore decided to use the data from all the US studies for the purpose of population risk assessment." In other words, first they checked to see if the extra studies would agree with their numbers, and when they didn't, they decided to include them.
BTW, what do you think of them recalculating the studies to a 90% CI, instead of the standard 95%?
| First off, inhaling smoke of six to twelve cigarettes per year is not a helpful comparison. From what I have seen of measurements, exposure to SHS in in some pubs in the Netherlands, to take on example, was quite high. You could literally see the smoke hanging like a fog. If this is only "six to twelve cigarettes per year", this tells us more about the extremely high doses you receive from cigarettes than it tells us about the dose you receive from SHS. |
I think a toxicologist would disagree with you. The Dose Is The Poison. The fact that you can see a lot of smoke is immaterial, what matters is how much is inhaled.
| Second, given that second hand smoke is a major source of indoor particulate matter, particulate matter is a likely cause of asthma and people are exposed to particulate matter through a number of sources, SHS increases the dose of particulate matter people are exposed too, thereby increasing the chance people have to develop asthma. |
The studies that measured actual exposure to ETS were done by measuring the particulate matter accumulated in the filters of portable air pumps worn by non-smokers in smoky environments.
The relationship of Asthma to ETS is pretty interesting. Back when half the population smoked, and smoked everywhere, asthma was fairly rare. The numbers of smokers is now half what it was at its peak, and severe restrictions mean that non-smokers are being exposed to it far, far less than they were in the past. Yet, asthma cases have risen dramatically. The number of asthma cases seems inversely proportionate to the number of smokers and smoking restrictions – in other words, as exposure goes down, asthma incidents increase. If I were as dishonest as the anti-smoker advocates, I'd push this as "proof" that ETS has a protective effect against asthma.
| I actually think such an experiment could be performed in a way that would pass ethical committees. If you'd get a positive result (ie, increased Po 210 in children playing with smokers) I'd be happy to write a nice research proposal for an epidemiological study on Third Hand Smoke exposure and their effects on health. I mean, my current project will last for four years, but I'll need work afterwards |
I'd suggest presenting it to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It the likely result is a further tool to demonize smokers they'll write you a nice fat check.
Oh, wait, you're concerned about ethics. You're no doubt concerned about accuracy too. Never mind. You'll have to find someone else to fund it.
| There's very little science within the Libertarian anti-anti-smoking campaign. |
It's nice that you still have bigotries and unfounded beliefs to cushion you from reality. It saves you all the trouble of dealing with the points they make. You just write them off as political drivel and move on.
| I think it's hysterical when a person's own evidence largely undermines his own claims. |
" Results.—Fourteen of the 61 studies were unpublished. Median time to publication was 5 years (95% confidence interval [CI], 4-7 years) for statistically nonsignificant studies and 3 years (95% CI, 3-5 years) for statistically significant studies (P=.004). Statistically significant results (P=.004), experimental study design (P=.01), study size less than or equal to 500 (P=.01), and animals as subjects (P=.03) were predictive of time to publication. When the studies with human participants were analyzed separately, only statistically significant data were predictive of publication (P=.007). Multivariate analysis of all studies indicated that statistical significance (P=.001) and study design (P=.01) were the only independent predictors of time to publication, while for the human studies only statistical significance was predictive of publication (P=.007).
Conclusion.—There is a publication delay for passive smoking studies with nonsignificant results compared with those with significant results."
Originally posted by Cuneiformist
I found this over at the CDC site a little bit ago:
Reduced Hospitalizations for Acute Myocardial Infarction After Implementation of a Smoke-Free Ordinance
It's just one report (I don't know if it was funded by anti-smoking zealots or not), but the conclusions are certainly interesting. |
This junk science approach was invented by Dr. Sergeant and Sheppard in their Helena study. That particular study wasn't just problematic – it was fraudulent. (My research on it: http://www.davehitt.com/facts/helena.html).
It's a pretty simple technique. Whenever a ban is put in place, you look for trends in heart attacks (MCIs). Overall, MCIs have been dropping worldwide, but figuring that into your calculations is optional. When the numbers stay the same you remain silent. When they go up, you remain silent. When they go down you proclaim it was due to the smoking ban. Hooray, Proof!
There was a fun one in Scotland recently. The "researchers" cherry picked the months they collected data to "prove" there was a huge drop in heart attacks. But when the real numbers were finally published, it showed the MCIs increased, significantly, for the first time in a decade. Of course, the first claim made headlines, the second was barely published.
Marf, I've never said that primary smoking isn't risky. And yes, there are short term health effects as well. But the things being attributed to SHS (and now THS), primary lung cancer and heart disease, usually take a decade or two to manifest themselves in a primary smoker.
Let's go with ten years. In that time a smoker will have smoked 73,000 to 146,000 cigarettes. (The first number is a pack a day, the second is two packs. According to sales numbers from the UN, the average is about 1.2 packs a day.) A non-smoker with constant exposure to a smoky environment will have inhaled the smoke of 60-120 cigarettes over that period of time. Is it biologically plausible they'll get heart disease or lung cancer from that amount of exposure?
| I don't think we'll here much about it in the future. |
I hope you're wrong. I'd like to see this trumpeted all over, because it exposes the dishonesty of the anti-smoker crowd.
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2009/01/outlaw_parental.html
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When a vampire Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door, don't invite him in. Blood Witness: http://bloodwitness.com
Get Smartenized® with the Quick Hitts blog: http://www.davehitt.com/blog2/index.phpBlog |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 09:55:04 [Permalink]
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Hittman wrote:
I hope you're wrong. I'd like to see this trumpeted all over, because it exposes the dishonesty of the anti-smoker crowd. |
I'd just like to point out how polarized this is getting. (I refer to the term "anti-smoker crowd.") I suspect that most people are not on either extreme of the arguments about smoking and public policy. Most people support some degree of moderate restrictions. Most nonsmokers probably easily tolerate (without ostracizing) a friend or relative smoking so long as it is done outside. Most smokers probably have no issue with having to smoke outside when they are in a venue or in the home/car of a nonsmokers.
Editing to add: granted, this suspicion is based on my personal experience of never having casually met an extremely angry smoker (opposed to somewhat irritated but understanding) who feels totally victimized by changed in policies, nor have I ever casually met anyone so anti-smoking that they advocate outright banning. I know the extremes are out there 'cause I hear about what they are up to in the media. I just think the extremes are an extreme minority. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 01/15/2009 09:58:32 |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 11:10:18 [Permalink]
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Hittman:
I'd like to see this trumpeted all over, because it exposes the dishonesty of the anti-smoker crowd. |
Is it your view that those who do research and present evidence, and not of the anecdotal variety, that SHS causes harm to passive smokers are members of the dishonest anti-smoker crowd? Parenthetically, where is the research that supports homeopathy? I ask because you seem to regard SHS studies and assertions about the efficacy of homeopathy as equal on your fraud scale.
I'd really like to know.
I'm not asking you to show me how the studies are flawed. There are others here that can deal with your assertions that the studies that confirm the harm being done by SHS are bogus, as you contend. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Third-hand smoke
