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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
 Posted - 01/19/2009 : 08:21:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
I was actually going to bring that up, too. When hanging out with a group of people, the smokers will periodically go out and have their quick smoke, and the non-smokers stay inside. This changes the dynamics of the group-- if only for a few minutes-- and allows you to have conversations with people you otherwise weren't engaged in conversation with.
And this brings up another point-- I've never had a smoking friend say that we can't go out because there's no smoking. Even when I lived in Baltimore and my usual hangout was no smoking, but there was no city-wide ban, no one said "I won't go there" to me. We went out, and if they wanted a smoke, the stepped outside. And, as far as I know (I was just in Baltimore a few months ago), it's still in business...
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In the Netherlands a ban has been instituted last year for all establishments except coffeeshops (and I mean the dutch coffeeshops where you don't go for a cup of coffee). At this point a number of smaller establishments are complaining about decreased renenues and say they will purposefully ignore the ban. But from what I can gather, this is a small minority. The idea I'm getting here is that it concerns a number of pubs that would have gone over anyway, regardless of the ban. Especially at the current economic climate.
Personally I never thought about banning smoking much, until I did my internship in the US, where a ban was already instituted. I never mind people smoking around me much, but I was always pleasantly surprised when I came back from a night of pubcrawling and didn't have the smell of smoke all over my clothes. |
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 - 01/19/2009 : 11:07:03 [Permalink]
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| The only problem I've had is with the self-imposed complete smoking bans in some hotels. There were a couple of Marriott hotels I really liked, for their convenience and services, but all of Marriott is now non-smoking, and the last thing I want to do while chilling out on travel is to put on clothes and go outside to smoke. When I go back to those cities, I'm going to find different hotels, even though they'll necessarily be farther away from where I work. And my collection of Marriott "rewards" points is now worthless. |
- 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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Hittman
Skeptic Friend
134 Posts |
Posted - 01/19/2009 : 11:11:45 [Permalink]
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| Where is your evidence of all this job and business loss? Do you have a list of businesses that have closed due to anti-SHS laws? |
Yes. But it's better than a simple list. I've got hundreds of stories, most with links to news articles, that chronicle the devastation. http://www.davehitt.com/facts/badforbiz/
Minneapolis provides one of the starkest examples. In the first full year before the ban 14 bars closed. The year after 100 went out of business. The second year of the ban an additional 50 closed.
| I'll agree that any law that led to the closing of a "cigar bar" or something similar was over-the-top ridiculous. But I'm talking about the average restaurant or bar that's not dedicated to smoking itself as a business model. |
Ridiculous, but common. Hell, in some states it's illegal to smoke in a cigar shop.
Bars are seldom dedicated to smoking as a business model, but many have a very large smoking clientele, so allowing smoking is an important part of that business model. Smaller venues that cater to a blue collar crowd/and or older customers are hit the hardest, and seldom survive.
| But you didn't go "over and over and over that" with me, you just repeated evidence-free assertions (like you did just now, again). Your magical mantras for the economic crash. You can't blame your failures on me. (Well, you can try, but it's nothing more than a rhetorical trick that's rather transparently dishonest.) |
Sorry, it became clear that you couldn't (wouldn't?) comprehend the most basic fact of the discussion that without the CRA this never would have happened. My failure to convince you of this most basic and obvious fact, after many tries, led me to give up on you as a hopeless cause. You were not about to allow facts to interfere with your political beliefs. There was no point in continuing the conversation.
| "Huge increase in risk?" I thought it was so small that the relative risk was actually insignificant and should be ignored? 1.2 RR is a "huge" increase, now? |
I don't believe it's a huge increase in risk, but the anti smokers portray it that way. Every year 3,000 people in the US die from SHS! Oh, wait, now it's 50,000! Hold on, now it's 53,000! But wait, now it's 63,000! There Is No Safe Level of Second Hand Smoke! (I love that one. There are safe levels of arsenic, cyanide, mercury etc., but SHS, no way, the slightest whiff is deadly.) It's so easy to have huge numbers when you can just pull them out of your ass and have a lazy media repeat them endlessly.
| Hittman is making a huge mistake in not knowing his audience here, and so expects us to buy his baloney. |
I will admit to having made the mistake of assuming a skeptics board would be populated entirely by people skeptical about everything. That is obviously not the case.
So far I've seen justifications for the ACS discrediting their own data when it didn't agree with their agenda. A blasι response to Big Pharma quietly pushing smoking bans and higher taxes on tobacco to increase their sales of (largely ineffective, highly profitable) smoking cessation products. An insistence that the trivial amount of smoke inhaled by a non smoker creates a measurable increase in risk. Justification for fiddling with the CI to turn a non- significant number into a significant one. A willingness to believe something as ridiculous as sm |
When a vampire Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door, don't invite him in. Blood Witness: http://bloodwitness.com
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/19/2009 : 12:30:28 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
Yes. But it's better than a simple list. I've got hundreds of stories, most with links to news articles, that chronicle the devastation. http://www.davehitt.com/facts/badforbiz/ |
Well, no, it's not better than a simple list when looking for support of your "thousands."| Minneapolis provides one of the starkest examples. In the first full year before the ban 14 bars closed. The year after 100 went out of business. The second year of the ban an additional 50 closed. |
Interestingly, the majority of stories seem to be from places where the weather sucks in Winter.
More interesting, the latest news you've got from Montgomery County is from August of 2004. Where's the news from this year?| Sorry, it became clear that you couldn't (wouldn't?) comprehend the most basic fact of the discussion that without the CRA this never would have happened. My failure to convince you of this most basic and obvious fact, after many tries, led me to give up on you as a hopeless cause. You were not about to allow facts to interfere with your political beliefs. There was no point in continuing the conversation. |
You never supported that "basic and obvious fact" with anything but your own insistence that it is a fact. Repetition of an assertion does not make it true. The CRA didn't mandate loans to high-risk people, and had no effect on securitized mortgage investments, because the banks that created those were not regulated by the CRA. I wouldn't buy into your fantasy about the CRA without something more than your say-so, yet you accuse me of not being a proper skeptic?!| It's so easy to have huge numbers when you can just pull them out of your ass... |
Yeah, and I'm wondering about the damage done by bans, too.| I will admit to having made the mistake of assuming a skeptics board would be populated entirely by people skeptical about everything. That is obviously not the case. |
Actually, it is the case, but you have taken skepticism about your argument as a denial of it, like any good creationist drone.| So far I've seen... An insistence that the trivial amount of smoke inhaled by a non smoker creates a measurable increase in risk. |
You fabricated that last one, ignored the rebuttal of your fabrication, and now have repeated - unmodified - your fabrication, assuring me that it is a purposeful lie, and not just a misunderstanding on your part.| Justification for fiddling with the CI to turn a non- significant number into a significant one. |
Another fabrication.| Perhaps, on this subject at least, I should put the word "skeptics" in quotes. |
Yup, just like the fundamentalists, when you cannot grok others' arguments, you misrepresent them and then claim that your lies mean that your opponents are not skeptics. |
- 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 - 01/20/2009 : 05:40:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
The only problem I've had is with the self-imposed complete smoking bans in some hotels. There were a couple of Marriott hotels I really liked, for their convenience and services, but all of Marriott is now non-smoking, and the last thing I want to do while chilling out on travel is to put on clothes and go outside to smoke. When I go back to those cities, I'm going to find different hotels, even though they'll necessarily be farther away from where I work. And my collection of Marriott "rewards" points is now worthless.
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That is a pity, and possibly unnecessary. I know of no smoking ban that prohibits smoking in certain places in the building, for example private rooms in hotels. Best I can think of with these kind of bans is that the hotels had complaints about the smell of smoke from a former guest, but I don't buy for a minute that you cannot remove that smell with a good airing. |
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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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 06:40:11 [Permalink]
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| I will admit to having made the mistake of assuming a skeptics board would be populated entirely by people skeptical about everything. That is obviously not the case. |
Actually, it is the case, but you have taken skepticism about your argument as a denial of it, like any good creationist drone. |
And don't forget the 9/11 conspiracy guys. I forget who it was-- ergo123 or HYBRID-- but one of those 9/11 guys really couldn't see how we could call ourselves "skeptics" because we bought into the official story and didn't accept the whole conspiracy that the government brought down the towers and shot a missile at the Pentagon.
As a side topic (and not to hijack this thread), after some of those accusations, I've wondered how to best define a skeptic in the sense of the people on this board. Thus far, the standard definitions have been wanting.
Maybe I should start a thread on this... |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 06:40:24 [Permalink]
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Hadn't gotten around to responding to this post yet.
Originally posted by Hittman
| Look, even if smokers inhale a "dose" 1,200 times as large as non-smokers, is it fair to expose non-smokers to even that small a risk when they gain no benefit whatsoever? This is the public health policy question. |
No one is forced to be in a smoky environment any more. |
Not since the bans indeed. Before that, if I wanted to go out in the Netherlands, I would always end up in a smoky pub. Why? Because there were no smoke-free pubs. So I would either not go out, or go out in a smoky pub. "Choice" doesn't apply if it doesn't exist.
Also, at least in the Netherlands, many work places were not smoke free. Meaning that you either were exposed or unemployed, especially in lower paid jobs. Again, "choice" does not apply if it doesn't exist.
| The benefit of being a bartender or waitress in a smoking bar, as opposed to being unemployed or seeing your tips drop by 80% when the smoke free laws go in, is, for most people in that profession, much higher than the miniscule, barely measurable (and most likely non-existent) risk from SHS. This is a private property issue even more than a health issue. Smoking bans have destroyed thousands of businesses and eliminated thousands of jobs. All in the name of keeping the nicotine nannies happy. |
1: I have yet to see actual evidence of the claim you make here. Not anecdotes, not a list of stories, actual evidence.
2: If you work as a bartender or waitress and there aren't any smoke-free pubs to work at, choice does not exist.
What is it you call a fraud in the Helena study? The study itself? It is a "quick and dirty" study with flaws that studies like these (so-called ecological studies) always have, but there is no hiding this in the study. The reporting is complete. What are you calling "fraud" here?
| , that they regularly lie about smoking bans being good for business (those links are from my blog which has excerpts from about 400 articles about business that have been devastated and often destroyed by bans) |
Anecdotes do not evidence make.
| and of course, we have this recent lovely little Third Hand Smoke fiasco. |
From one person. You have yet to tie this to the entire anti-smoking groups.
| You regularly hear "experts" make the claim that working in a smoky environment is the same as smoking a half a pack a day, or a pack a day, or two packs a day. The numbers are inconsistent because they're pulling them out of their ass. |
You've yet to show that. You haven't showed that your numbers are correct (and given your reasoning on all other issues here, I have the nagging suspicion that they are not). Even if they are correct, I have repeatedly asked you whether this meant the environmental smoke exposure is high and cigarette smoke insanely high, or whether it means environmental smoke is low and cigarette smoke high. You have yet to provide any kind of answer to that.
| And I have never seen a reporter question that proclamation, not once. These are not occasional missteps, this is a widespread pattern of dishonest behavior. |
Or maybe your numbers are wrong. Where do you get them from, where do they get theirs from. Presumably, you have checked the research behind both.
For an even longer, much more detailed list, I refer you to a blog by Michael Siegal. He is a tobacco control advocate he believes SHS is dangerous and is in favor of smoking bans but he's so disgusted by the pervasive dishonesty of his fellow miscreants he points it out whenever he can. He's never at a loss for material. They don't like him so much any more.
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/ |
Scanned a number of his articles, he makes a few good points and a few exceedingly bad ones.
edited to add: And in some he is just plain lying. Like this one, where he completely misrepresents the claims made by Tobacco-free kids. Hittman, is that you?
| then I agree with the ACS assessement of Enstrom and Kabat. Basically, their criticism is that both the exposure assessment and the selection of cases is selective, inaccurate and incomplete. |
Think about it for a minute. Consider that Enstrom and Kabat did account for more widespread smoking in the early years of the study, and then consider that a non-smoker living with a smoker would get a much larger dose of SHS, regardless of other exposure, than they would in a non-smoking home. Also consider that the ACS was dissing their own data which was used to calculate the numbers. |
And the ACS stated that the smoking in the early years of the study could not be well-controlled for, only a small part of the entire study was used and the contrast in the early years between exposed and not exposed to SHS was too low to make a good differentiation between the two groups. I would assume they know their own data. The problem with old datasets as the one from the ACS is that often the data is not collected in a way that is up-do-date. Furthermore, the ACS cohort was used for multiple purposes (as is often the case in cohort studies, given that they are very expensive), but from what I can gather assessing the effects of SHS was not one of those purposes. I have worked with old datasets in the past, for example datasets from the NIH NHANES study in the 1970's. Smoking in those studies is often recorded quite badly and in small subsamples of the entire study because at that time smoking wasn't known to have adverse effects and people were still searching on how to accurately record smoking history. This holds double for SHS, which wasn't in the picture at all at that time. This is problematic for any SHS-study and I would imagine that this holds for the ACS-dataset as well. Just because it was a dataset from the ACS, doesn't mean it can be used for the sort of study Enstrom and Kabat wanted to use it for.
edited to add: Reading the study, a major problem with it is that SHS from workplaces was not recorded in the study. Since in the 50's and 60's and later smoking in the workplaces was common and you spend most of your day there, the exposure assessment is incomplete.
| That is one of the few excuses that appear to have a rational basis. Most nanny organizations simply insisted the study was useless because it was "tobacco funded." |
Given the private memo's between the authors and the tobacco industry and the statements they made therein, this insistence isn't entirely without basis. If you read a number of the those, the goals of the authors are highly suspect.
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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 01/20/2009 07:39:56 |
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Hittman
Skeptic Friend
134 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 12:39:53 [Permalink]
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| Well, no, it's not better than a simple list when looking for support of your "thousands." |
Obviously you didn't bother to read. There are nearly 400 stories articles there. Many of them deal with several places going out of business because of bans. Some deal with dozens, a few with hundreds.
| Interestingly, the majority of stories seem to be from places where the weather sucks in Winter. |
Wow. Just, wow. Places that have been in business for ten, fifteen, thirty years, who see their venues go from packed to empty when a ban is implemented, suddenly fail because it's cold?
Ok, Dave, since you insist on revisiting the CRA, 'splain this to me.
How would the current meltdown have happened if there were no CRA? Please be specific.
| Yeah, and I'm wondering about the damage done by bans, too. |
Keep wondering, Sparky. Keep ignoring the documented evidence. Hmmm . . .I'm not the one relying on appeal to authority. . .who sounds like a fundy now?
| Not since the bans indeed. Before that, if I wanted to go out in the Netherlands, I would always end up in a smoky pub. Why? Because there were no smoke-free pubs. So I would either not go out, or go out in a smoky pub. "Choice" doesn't apply if it doesn't exist. |
You chose to go to a pub. No one forced you. And if there were no smoke-free pubs, and the demand was as high as the nannies claim, this was a perfect opportunity to become wealthy open one and watch people flood it.
There is a reason smoke free pubs were rare pre-ban it was a poor business model. The nannies claim, in one breath, that bans are great for business. In the next they say "we need a level playing field (their favorite line, second only to "for the chillllldreeeeen.") But why do they need a level playing field if it's really good for business? All they'd have to do is convince one or two pub owners to go smoke free. They'd be such a huge success that other pubs would be forced to follow suit or lose their customers. Their constant use of that phrase exposes the lie.
| 1: I have yet to see actual evidence of the claim you make here. Not anecdotes, not a list of stories, actual evidence. |
You've poisoned the well by refusing to listen to first hand stories of people's experiences. What do you consider evidence, a study? Who would finance such a study?
Here is a list of articles about people suffering from severe tip depletion. These are real people who have been badly and directly hurt. It would be rather heartless to write them off as mere anecdotes and stories.
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/badforbiz/?s=tips
| 2: If you work as a bartender or waitress and there aren't any smoke-free pubs to work at, choice does not exist. |
Of course it does. People are not forced into being bartenders or waitresses. They choose that profession, and if they choose it where most places allow smoking, they know that up front.
| but I don't buy for a minute that you cannot remove that smell with a good airing. |
According to James Repace, one of the leading experts in SHS, ventilating the room of SHS requires winds of 300 MPH. That 150 MPH hurricane, which sucked your refrigerator out of the window and then destroyed your entire house? Not enough, according to this prominent (and very well paid) expert. You need double that to get rid of the SHS.
| What is it you call a fraud in the Helena study? The study itself? It is a "quick and dirty" study with flaws that studies like these (so-called ecological studies) always have, but there is no hiding this in the study. The reporting is complete. What are you calling "fraud" here? |
All epidemiological studies are flawed it is the nature of the beast. It is impossible to have data that's 100% accurate when studying humans. But some studies try to control for those flaws, and others exploit them to arrive at their conclusions.
Let's leave the fraud angle aside for a moment, and look at the actual study. The fact that only 38% of the patients in their study were non-smokers was mentioned in their study, but not used in any calculations. There was no attempt to determine if their exposure to SHS had increased or decreased. None. There was no adjusting for any confounders. A similar dip occurred in 1998 and they completely ignored it. This study wasn't just weak it was pathetic.
They announced their results a year before the study was published, claiming a 60% drop. When the actual study was published . . . oops! It was only a 40% drop. So sorry, but at least we got the more scary number out there with the honorable method of "science by press conference."
But let's give them the benefit of the doubt that could have been an innocent error. (Yeah, right.) Let's get to the fraud.
First off: competing interests. Both Sergeant and Sheppard claim to have none, yet they were both active in the anti-smoking movement prior to the study. They hooked up with Stanton Glanz, whose contribution appears to be slapping his name on the study to lend it credibility. Glanz has brought in tens of millions of dollars for anti-smoking research. He makes a living vilifying smokers. But none of them have any competing interests.
But that's minor. Let's get down to the serious fraud.
First, the numbers. They claimed that the numbers went down during the six months of the ban. But an examination of their own chart (http://www.davehitt.com/facts/helenacharts.html) shows otherwise. The effect only lasted for the first three months of the ban, when it was not being well enforced. (For the first two months of the ban enforcement consisted of the DOH sending out warnings, with no fines or penalties.) In month four the number of AMIs spiked, and in months five and six they were at normal levels. That's fraud. Pure, unadulterated, fraud, easily extracted from their own chart of the data.
On April 7, 2003, Sargent and Shepard attended a meeting of the Montana Senate where they heard testimony from business owners that during the first months of the ban it was being ignored by many venues, including three out of the town's five casinos. They also heard testimony that many customers were traveling outside of the area to visit smoking venues. But in their study they claimed that there were only two non-compliant venues. That's an outright lie. That's fraud. Serious fraud.
Even if the study weren't fraudulent, it should have been written off as pathetic. Add the fraud, and there's no excuse for using it to justify smoking bans. Yet, the American Cancer Society has done just that. What does that say about their credibility?
| Reading the study, a major problem with it is that SHS from workplaces was not recorded in the study. Since in the 50's and 60's and later smoking in the workplaces was common and you spend most of your day there, the exposure assessment is incomplete. |
Exposure in the workplace was the norm, a baseline at the time. Additional exposure at in the home is the issue.
As for Enstrom's integrity, an investigation was launched at the request of the American Cancer Society who claimed "scientific misconduct," a potential career breaker. The university spent two months on the investigation, and found no misconduct. The ACS has yet to apologize. |
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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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 14:09:43 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
Obviously you didn't bother to read. There are nearly 400 stories articles there. Many of them deal with several places going out of business because of bans. Some deal with dozens, a few with hundreds. |
And many say things like, "the economy is going bad, people are going out less, but bar owner Mr. Expert says that he's losing business because of the smoking ban." As the old saying goes, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data."| Wow. Just, wow. Places that have been in business for ten, fifteen, thirty years, who see their venues go from packed to empty when a ban is implemented, suddenly fail because it's cold? |
Yeah, people don't like standing outside to smoke when it's cold. That's why I thought the relative absence of more tropical climes from your reporting was interesting.
And I still see nothing about Montgomery County from you past 2004. You wouldn't be ignoring the existence of disconfirming data, would you?Ok, Dave, since you insist on revisiting the CRA, 'splain this to me.
How would the current meltdown have happened if there were no CRA? Please be specific. |
You claimed it was caused by the CRA, and you've refused to back up your claim with supporting evidence, so now you're taking another page out of the creationist playbook and are asking me to prove some other hypothesis. Nevermind the fact that your hypothesis is not now, nor has it ever been, "Dave's hypothesis is wrong." Your hypothesis should be able to stand on its own, but it falls because it's only your say-so which was propping it up, so you try to distract attention away from that fact by shifting the burden of evidence to someone else. Yours is a classic creationist tactic, Hittman.| Keep wondering, Sparky. Keep ignoring the documented evidence. |
I'm asking for evidence. I'm getting a pile of newspaper clippings.| Hmmm . . .I'm not the one relying on appeal to authority. . . |
Neither am I, so why bring it up at all?| who sounds like a fundy now? |
You still do.
Oh, but it gets even better!| These are real people who have been badly and directly hurt. It would be rather heartless to write them off as mere anecdotes and stories. |
That's one of the classic lines from quacks and their supporters, just instead of people being hurt, the alt-med woo-woos claim that it's heartless to write off success stories as mere anecdotes. Playing on people's heartstrings for political reasons is not only crass, Hittman, but completely lacking in a logical basis. |
- 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 - 01/20/2009 : 15:42:52 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
| Not since the bans indeed. Before that, if I wanted to go out in the Netherlands, I would always end up in a smoky pub. Why? Because there were no smoke-free pubs. So I would either not go out, or go out in a smoky pub. "Choice" doesn't apply if it doesn't exist. |
You chose to go to a pub. No one forced you. And if there were no smoke-free pubs, and the demand was as high as the nannies claim, this was a perfect opportunity to become wealthy open one and watch people flood it.
There is a reason smoke free pubs were rare pre-ban it was a poor business model. The nannies claim, in one breath, that bans are great for business. In the next they say "we need a level playing field (their favorite line, second only to "for the chillllldreeeeen.") But why do they need a level playing field if it's really good for business? All they'd have to do is convince one or two pub owners to go smoke free. They'd be such a huge success that other pubs would be forced to follow suit or lose their customers. Their constant use of that phrase exposes the lie. |
Bull. It is either go to a pub, or be left out of an important part of social life. That is not an even choice. The smoke-free pubs I know of in the Netherlands have always done well. This is of course anecdotal, but that is an indication that it is not a bad businessmodel per sι. But those weren't located anywhere near where I lived. So if I would have minded, I wouldn't have had that choice.
| 1: I have yet to see actual evidence of the claim you make here. Not anecdotes, not a list of stories, actual evidence. |
You've poisoned the well by refusing to listen to first hand stories of people's experiences. What do you consider evidence, a study? Who would finance such a study?
Here is a list of articles about people suffering from severe tip depletion. These are real people who have been badly and directly hurt. It would be rather heartless to write them off as mere anecdotes and stories.
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/badforbiz/?s=tips |
I don't care if it's heartless or not. Anecdotes are not evidence. You are the one pretending to be scientific here, but apparently only if it suits you (and even then it is more than clear from your posts that it is only pretend for you). Governments would fund this study if it were pressed enough by organizations representing pubs.
| 2: If you work as a bartender or waitress and there aren't any smoke-free pubs to work at, choice does not exist. |
Of course it does. People are not forced into being bartenders or waitresses. They choose that profession, and if they choose it where most places allow smoking, they know that up front. |
You don't always have that choice.
| but I don't buy for a minute that you cannot remove that smell with a good airing. |
According to James Repace, one of the leading experts in SHS, ventilating the room of SHS requires winds of 300 MPH. That 150 MPH hurricane, which sucked your refrigerator out of the window and then destroyed your entire house? Not enough, according to this prominent (and very well paid) expert. You need double that to get rid of the SHS. |
Source?
| What is it you call a fraud in the Helena study? The study itself? It is a "quick and dirty" study with flaws that studies like these (so-called ecological studies) always have, but there is no hiding this in the study. The reporting is complete. What are you calling "fraud" here? |
All epidemiological studies are flawed it is the nature of the beast. It is impossible to have data that's 100% accurate when studying humans. But some studies try to control for those flaws, and others exploit them to arrive at their conclusions. |
All scientific studies are flawed. It is nearby impossible to perform any scientific study to perfection. From a reading of the article I see no direct indication of "exploiting them". But let's follow along.
| Let's leave the fraud angle aside for a moment, and look at the actual study. The fact that only 38% of the patients in their study were non-smokers was mentioned in their study, but not used in any calculations. There was no attempt to determine if their exposure to SHS had increased or decreased. None. There was no adjusting for any confounders. |
Adjusting for confounders would have been meaningless with the low numbers. You can either report the numbers without confounders and mention the problem, or use the confounders and get meaningless results. In that case, the former is the better approach.
Besides, it is questionable what the interpretation would have been of controlling for confounders. Controlling for confounders is meaningful if you look at some kind of effect with both controls and cases. Here you have only cases, your population is the source of the cases and the people in the population are their own controls. I would have liked to see the numbers of smokers, non-smokers and former smokers reported for all periods, but I'm not sure at what kind of interpretation I could give to the scenarios, given that presumably exposure would diminish for all in relatively the same way.
| A similar dip occurred in 1998 and they completely ignored it. This study wasn't just weak it was pathetic. |
It wasn't a similar dip. If you look at the chart from the presentation, there was a dip in 1998 but the variability during that time was higher. It was more spread out. This indicates that the dip in 1998 was more likely to be random variation than the dip in 2002. What would be interesting, would be to have an indication of the average temperatures during this period. I've tried to obtain those for the Helena station, but I have to pay for them and am not in a mood to do so. I might have the data when I nicked temperature data when I was doing my internship, but IIRC the NHANES dataset didn't have Helena as a location, so I wouldn't have needed that particular weather station (I was merging and analyzing temperatures versus physiological parameters). I might still have a weather station nearby for some kind of indication though. Looking at the data the jump in temperature from September to October might have been high in 1998, and 2000 might have had a particularly warm summer. But that's just guessing. I'll try to look at that somewhere this week, although I have no idea when.
| They announced their results a year before the study was published, claiming a 60% drop. When the actual study was published . . . oops! It was only a 40% drop. So sorry, but at least we got the more scary number out there with the honorable method of "science by press conference." |
This happens more often with the presentation of preliminary results. Sorry if I don't get excited about that in any fucking way.
But let's give them the benefit of the doubt that could have been an innocent error. (Yeah, right.) Let's get to the fraud.
First off: competing interests. Both Sergeant and Sheppard claim to have none, yet they were both active in the anti-smoking movement prior to the study. They hooked up with Stanton Glanz, whose contribution appears to be slapping his name on the study to lend it credibility. Glanz has brought in tens of millions of dollars for anti-smoking research. He makes a living vilifying smokers. But none of them have any competing interests. |
It is interesting that you make such a big deal out of competing interests in the case of an anti-smoking study, but ignore it completely when talking about your own favored studies. My irony meter is burning up here. And to make a big deal out of them hooking up with a professor, as they are both attending physicians. Meaning they wouldn't necessarily have a lot of experience in this and employed the help of someone who did. They would have been stupid not too.
| But that's minor. Let's get down to the serious fraud. |
Yes, let's.
| First, the numbers. They claimed that the numbers went down during the six months of the ban. But an examination of their own chart (http://www.davehitt.com/facts/helenacharts.html) shows otherwise. The effect only lasted for the first three months of the ban, when it was not being well enforced. (For the first two months of the ban enforcement consisted of the DOH sending out warnings, with no fines or penalties.) In month four the number of AMIs spiked, and in months five and six they were at normal levels. That's fraud. Pure, unadulterated, fraud, easily extracted from their own chart of the data. |
It's not fraud, it's you forgetting that Montana has a winter and a summer. June, July, August would have been warmer than October, November, December. In winter months, and in Montana these are winter months, mortality due to cardiovascular diseases goes up. So you would expect an increase in mortality in that period compared to the first. So your statement is meaningless. It would be meaningful to compare the summer average and autumn/winter average during that period for all years. Eyeballing the graph, this increase in mortality during autumn/winter happens for all periods and the averages for the three comparable periods in all years are higher than in the period of the ban. It's not fraud, it's you again having a very bad understanding of how to do statistics. In this particular post, how to look at time trends.
| On April 7, 2003, Sargent and Shepard attended a meeting of the Montana Senate where they heard testimony from business owners that during the first months of the ban it was being ignored by many venues, including three out of the town's five casinos. They also heard testimony that many customers were traveling outside of the area to visit smoking venues. But in their study they claimed that there were only two non-compliant venues. That's an outright lie. That's fraud. Serious fraud. |
The number they gave was the one reported by the city-county health department, as you could have read in the article if your eyes weren't glazed over from shouting "Fraud, Fraud, Fraud!!!" as loud as you could. If anyone was lying, it was not Sargent, Shepherd and Glanz for reporting the information they had gathered from another source. And they never stated in their article that they measured the exposure, they acknowledged that this was an issue.
And in fact, the testimony that customers were traveling outside of the area to visit smoking venues is inconsistent with the claim that the smoking ban was ineffective. If it was ineffective, customers wouldn't have needed to travel outside the area. That gives me the suspicion that accounts of the ineffectiveness of the ban have been greatly exaggerated.
| Even if the study weren't fraudulent, it should have been written off as pathetic. Add the fraud, and there's no excuse for using it to justify smoking bans. Yet, the American Cancer Society has done just that. What does that say about their credibility? |
Not much. As many such studies, it's not a pathetic study, it did the best it could with the low numbers and accurately recorded this. It is a weak study design, as these sort of cross-sectional studies often are. It is an indication of possible effect, not more. How this reflects on the ACS reflects on the precise wording they use. Seeing how you continually misrepresent what others write on this site and from articles, I'm sorry but I cannot trust you on that.
| Reading the study, a major problem with it is that SHS from workplaces was not recorded in the study. Since in the 50's and 60's and later smoking in the workplaces was common and you spend most of your day there, the exposure assessment is incomplete. |
| Exposure in the workplace was the norm, a baseline at the time. Additional exposure at in the home is the issue. |
And the problem. Exposure at the home would possibly be less than exposure at the workplace, given the time spend and the amount smoked at both. This means that that there would not be enough contrast to compare the differences of SHS from the spouse to no SHS of the spouse. In other words, the additional exposure from the home would be too low to make a good difference in comparison to exposure at work and (possibly) social events like pubs or parties. During the course of the study, the ACS had already warned about this, but Sakar and Enstrom ignored this warning.
[quote]As for Enstrom's integrity, an investigation was launched at the request of the American Cancer Society who claimed "scientific misconduct," a potential career breaker. The university spent two months on the investigation, and found no misconduct. The ACS has yet to apologize.
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But Enstrom had a long history of searching out funds from the tobacco industry specifically, as documents released through the litigation process surrounding court cases against the tobacco industry show. He failed to properly declare these funding sources in a number of articles in magazines where this was reported (such as epidemiology). While the statement of interest in the BMJ article was in line with the magazines' regulations, it was incomplete. In the upshot to the article, when Enstrom was working to secure the funding from the tobacco industry, he stated the support of the ACS in using the datasets (which he had already obtained earlier), but did not include letters of recommendation from the ACS (which is the usual course of action in such cases) and neglected to mention that the ACS had already advised against using the dataset for the analysis of SHS. In fact, one of the tobacco industries own advisers cited the same concerns as the ACS did, but was impressed by the stated support of the ACS. While the university's examination found no misconduct, I can understand the fact that the ACS did not apologize given the nature of the ties between Enstrom and the tobacco industry and the fact that Enstrom and Kabat ignored the advise of the ACS regarding the study. It would have been better if they had apologized, but I can understand that they didn't. It also shows that the concerns people had regarding the study were not unfounded.
Those interested, see here |
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 01/20/2009 15:44:54 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 16:24:32 [Permalink]
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| Obviously you didn't bother to read. There are nearly 400 stories articles there. Many of them deal with several places going out of business because of bans. Some deal with dozens, a few with hundreds. |
I looked through the list and wasn't entirely convinced that the bans are as financially devastating claimed.
For instance, this "news" piece is just a blog entry from a like-minded individual.
In this story, the bar owner makes it sound like the smoking ban ruined his business. And perhaps it did. But the article goes on to say| However, government numbers show gains in the hospitality industry. Iowa Workforce Development shows 2,400 more jobs in hospitality this month than last year at this time. Likewise, bar and restaurant earnings are up 1.5 percent. |
Though the article didn't say to, it's tempting to speculate that people are going out more knowing that their dining experience will be smoke-free.
This piece by MPR-- in typical public radio fashion-- plays he-said/she-said, and conclusions are hard to reach. Sure, the head of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association says that the smoking ban is the reason behind so many establishment closings. But it was written just 2 months ago! In case you didn't know: the economy sucks:| Job losses were spread across a wide variety of industries. Manufacturing lost 90,000 jobs, the leisure and hospitality industries cut 16,000 jobs, and construction employment shrank further by 49,000 jobs. |
Unless you want to blame manufacturing and construction job losses on smoking bans, it's more realistic to assume that leisure and hospitality losses are just a result of a bad economy, and not due to nefarious smoking bans.
And on it goes.
All in all, though, I'm skeptical. I mean, it's a rather simplistic association, isn't it? So if you're a reporter for a small town newspaper, and the owner of the famous local watering hole tells you that he's going out of business because of that damned smoking ban (and then he grumbles about those damned liberals and 'big government') you just write it up and run it. No critical thought, just follow the simplistic meme and you get your story in on time.
For instance, in one story, the owner of a bowling alley estimates that of the 74 regular members he lost over a certain period, 65% were because of the ban, and 35% were for other reasons. He offers no reasons for his guess (did he tally the numbers?), but it's offered without question nonetheless. Why is a guy's bowling alley suffering? He says it's smoking, and so we accept it.
But there could be a hundred other reasons. For instance, has he raised his rates at all? He doesn't say. I know that the price of beer has gone up around where I live in the last 2 years, and more than once when given the option of going out to watch a football game, or going over to a friend's house (where the beer is of course cheaper), I've opted for the latter.
I'm rambling here, but I think I've made my point. These news stories-- mostly short articles featuring small town watering holes closing down-- are entirely anecdotal, and it's hard to get much out of theme unless you're predisposed to favor the smoking ban angle. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 20:18:14 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
I mean, it's a rather simplistic association, isn't it? So if you're a reporter for a small town newspaper, and the owner of the famous local watering hole tells you that he's going out of business because of that damned smoking ban (and then he grumbles about those damned liberals and 'big government') you just write it up and run it. No critical thought, just follow the simplistic meme and you get your story in on time. |
Well done, Cune. I hadn't realized the irony until you put it like this. Hittman would have us distrust "the media" when "the media" says things that he doesn't like, but when "the media" says what he agrees with, then it's heartless for us to ignore it. So we can add that logical failure to his parade of hits, too.
Note well, Hittman, that you may very well be correct in your conclusion. Pointing out your logical fallacies and incorrect premises doesn't mean you didn't get the right answer, it only means that the logic you used to get to it is unsound (and in parts invalid). Were you to fix these problems, and present a valid, sound argument, you'd get a smallish group of people here to say, "no, SHS clearly is not the danger that the public thinks it is," and to help spread the word.
(If he continues with the standard denialist playbook, that will be his cue to tell me that he doesn't care what we think, he doesn't have to prove anything to us.) |
- 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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Hittman
Skeptic Friend
134 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 21:26:16 [Permalink]
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| You claimed it was caused by the CRA, and you've refused to back up your claim with supporting evidence, so now you're taking another page out of the creationist playbook and are asking me to prove some other hypothesis. |
When a creationist asks for another hypotheses, a Darwinst has one. You insist that this had nothing to do with the CRA, but when called on it the best you can do is call me a creationist. You are completely incapable of explaining your belief, which is downright religious (it certainly isn't fact based), that the CRA had nothing to do with it. You're being a complete asshole.
| Bull. It is either go to a pub, or be left out of an important part of social life. That is not an even choice. The smoke-free pubs I know of in the Netherlands have always done well. This is of course anecdotal, but that is an indication that it is not a bad businessmodel per sι. But those weren't located anywhere near where I lived. So if I would have minded, I wouldn't have had that choice. |
Again, this sounds like a golden opportunity.
If all the pubs around me played nothing but rap, and I complained that I was denied a choice because rap makes me ill, (high doses literally make me nauseous) would that justify having the government pass laws forcing places to cater to my whims?
The fact that smoke free pubs have done well there is telling. They found a business model that worked for them, in that place, atthat time. If the nicotine nannies hadn't convinced Big Brother to force bars and restaurants to change their policies in the US it's pretty likely that over time more and more places would go smoke free, on their own, until they were in the majority. But there still would be some places that would allow smoking, and no nicotine nanny would ever agree to that.
His own web site:
http://www.repace.com/pdf/iaqashrae.pdf
It's on the top of last page.
| If anyone was lying, it was not Sargent, Shepherd and Glanz for reporting the information they had gathered from another source. |
They attended a meeting where they heard first hand that the ban wasn't being enforced and that three out of five casinos were ignoring it. They were there. They heard the facts from the people involved. Then they quoted an authority they knew was wrong, and presented it as valid data.
But that's not fraud in your book? It is in mine. Serious fraud.
BTW, here's the source about their attendance at that meeting: http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/MTsenate040703.html
If we're going to write off studies from anyone who ever touched tobacco money, Ok, no problem, as long as we're consistent. We'll have to apply the same standards to studies funded by anti-smoking organizations. How many studies will that leave us?
Cuneformist: You'll note that in many cases we're talking about venues that have been in business, successfully, for decades. Many of them testify that their places were packed pre-ban, and empty post ban. You're right, these are typically smaller venues that cater to a smoking crowd. Venues that cater to younger customers, or more affluent customers, who aren't as likely to smoke, are not impacted as much, if at all. It's the blue collar and blue hair places that get hit the hardest.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 22:56:33 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
When a creationist asks for another hypotheses, a Darwinst has one. |
That's utterly irrelevant. You can't support your hypothesis. Neither can the creationists. Just because evolutionary biology does have another hypothesis doesn't make the creationist nonsense any weaker.| You insist that this had nothing to do with the CRA, but when called on it the best you can do is call me a creationist. |
Liar. I cited the CRA itself.| You are completely incapable of explaining your belief, which is downright religious (it certainly isn't fact based), that the CRA had nothing to do with it. |
Now you're just projecting your own failures onto me, in typical denialist style. All you can do is type more bafflegab, because you cannot provide any evidence that you are correct. Whether I can do so or not is irrelevant to your Libertarian party-line parroting of blame.| You're being a complete asshole. |
Yes, I am an asshole because I maintain that your arguments are yours to support, and if you fail to support them, they can generally be dismissed as political finger-pointing in light of a dogmatic adherence to the religious belief that an allegedly "free" market would have been better. (That doesn't make me correct, and it doesn't make you wrong, as I tried to explain. Did you grok that bit?)
The fact of the matter is that many factors came together to create the mess we're in now, and saying that it's the fault of the CRA is simple-minded baloney that doesn't help anyone fix anything. Which is the problem with 90-someodd-percent of what I've heard from Libertarians in general: they're quick to cast blame, and come up short on solutions that don't depend upon a foolish and unobtainable idealism.
You also wrote:| If all the pubs around me played nothing but rap, and I complained that I was denied a choice because rap makes me ill, (high doses literally make me nauseous) would that justify having the government pass laws forcing places to cater to my whims? |
Wow, can listening to rap kill you in minutes, like a bad asthma attack can?
And:| I've spoken with many of these people, both on line and face to face. They have poured their heart and soul and all their resources into their business, businesses that were doing fine until a ban came along. And now they've lost everything because of do-gooders who would never even consider going into a place like theirs. |
Oh, boo-fricking-hoo. Just another creationist tactic. "Darwinism leads people away from salvation!" It's the argument from bad moral consequences all over again. The problem with it is that reality doesn't give a damn about whether people succeed or fail in business. The proposition, "SHS presents a measurable and unacceptable health risk to non-smokers," is either true or false, regardless of the consequences its truth-value has on small bar owners. Those consequences have no bearing at all on whether the proposition is actually false (or true). They do have a bearing on crafting public health policy, but you seem to not be interested in that, because you're so focused on calling the anti-smoking folks bad names.
Bringing the consequences up and whining about them is no different at all from saying, "but what about the children?!?!" In your formulation, Hittman, you're crying, "but what about the small business owners?!?!" It's pathetic that you can bring the exact same tactic to bear in a forum thread in which you belittled those who opposed you who did the same thing.
You're little more than a hypocrite, Hittman. About many things. |
- 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 - 01/21/2009 : 03:35:16 [Permalink]
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| Bull. It is either go to a pub, or be left out of an important part of social life. That is not an even choice. The smoke-free pubs I know of in the Netherlands have always done well. This is of course anecdotal, but that is an indication that it is not a bad businessmodel per sι. But those weren't located anywhere near where I lived. So if I would have minded, I wouldn't have had that choice. |
Again, this sounds like a golden opportunity.
If all the pubs around me played nothing but rap, and I complained that I was denied a choice because rap makes me ill, (high doses literally make me nauseous) would that justify having the government pass laws forcing places to cater to my whims? |
You actually have a point here. I have to bend my mind around this, given your track record in this thread, but I concede. You are correct on this.
| The fact that smoke free pubs have done well there is telling. They found a business model that worked for them, in that place, atthat time. If the nicotine nannies hadn't convinced Big Brother to force bars and restaurants to change their policies in the US it's pretty likely that over time more and more places would go smoke free, on their own, until they were in the majority. But there still would be some places that would allow smoking, and no nicotine nanny would ever agree to that. |
Don't know. At least in the Netherlands the regulations surrounding smoking are not focused on the customers but are focused on the people working in the bar. The regulations here are the same for the bars as for the work place, although the pubs have gotten a delay in the implementation of the regulation for their sector (it was implemented in the second half last year, as opposed to starting at the beginning). If those pub owners set up a hookah bar or coffeeshop, they'll be exempt. So in the Netherlands I have yet to see this obsessive behavior of "nicotine nannies" you claim there is. Again, if you have actual evidence of this, instead of just empty claims, I'll have a look.
And once again you fail to read accurately. The calculations he performed were for the reductions of the exposure of someone working in a bar while people were smoking there. What he states is that to comply to the norm, an amount of ventilation would be required that cannot be achieved. If you disagree with him, you can of course tell me where his calculations or the assumptions he makes go wrong.
But I wasn't talking about the ventilation of a room full of smokers, like a crowded pub. I was talking about the ventilation of a room that had one or two smokers for a relatively short period of time and that was aired after they left. That is an entirely different situation.
| If anyone was lying, it was not Sargent, Shepherd and Glanz for reporting the information they had gathered from another source. |
They attended a meeting where they heard first hand that the ban wasn't being enforced and that three out of five casinos were ignoring it. They were there. They heard the facts from the people involved. Then they quoted an authority they knew was wrong, and presented it as valid data.
But that's not fraud in your book? It is in mine. Serious fraud.
BTW, here's the source about their attendance at that meeting: http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/MTsenate040703.html
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Of course, because you ignore the second part of the discussion. You know, where it was stated that people went to other towns to go out because they couldn't smoke in venues in Helena? And again, you are not accurately reporting what they stated (I spot a theme here, don't you?). They stated that "We do not know the prevalence of smoking in
venues covered by ban, though the city-county health department reported that all but two businesses complied."
Looking at the data you presented from that meeting, it will have been more than two that didn't comply, but it is highly unlikely that it is a majority. In such a case, the authors did well to go with the official source.
| If we're going to write off studies from anyone who ever touched tobacco money, Ok, no problem, as long as we're consistent. We'll have to apply the same standards to studies funded by anti-smoking organizations. How many studies will that leave us? |
I never said we should. My objections to the studies and "data" you have so far presented is on methodological grounds and your bad reading skills. What you ignore in this part however, is that the reason funding from tobacco industry is suspect is because they have a history of holding back information about the negative effects of smoking. Analysis of documents released through the litigation process indicate that this was not only the case for direct exposure, but also for SHS. The documents surrounding Enstrom, to take an example, give the direct implication of a strong bias on his part. There is no evidence that something similar happens in the case of the studies funded through other sources.
I find it highly ironic that you continue to accuse "anti-smokers" of publication bias and suspect funding, even though you have no evidence of this, while you continuously tout the studies done through funding of the tobacco industry without any criticism, even though publication bias has actually been confirmed in this case for both the effects of smoking and of SHS. |
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 01/21/2009 03:44:15 |
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Third-hand smoke
