Category: Stanton Glantz

Vaping risk compared to smoking: challenging a false and dangerous claim by Professor Stanton Glantz

This blog examines an extraordinary claim by Professor Stanton Glantz that the US public is right to believe that vaping is as harmful as smoking and that science is now catching up with public opinion. This claim is profoundly and dangerously false, and it demands a challenge.   This is a 13,000-word review looking in detail at Professor Glantz’s 700-word commentary and its supporting citations, examining thirteen claims that form the basis of the overall claim relating to cancer, heart attacks, stroke and respiratory illness, impact on smoking cessation and population smoking.

…and VAPING IS SMOKING

This is a 13,000-word critique of 700-word commentary by Professor Stanton Glantz: The Evidence of Electronic Cigarette Risks Is Catching Up With Public Perception. Read or print this blog as a formatted PDF.

In this blog, I examine an extraordinary claim by Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco. Professor Glantz claims that the US public is right to believe that vaping is as harmful as smoking and that science is now catching up with public opinion.

This claim is profoundly and dangerously false, and it demands a challenge.  Professor Glantz makes his claim in a commentary in response to a substantive paper on perceptions of the relative risk of smoking and vaping. Both articles appeared in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open.  This is an in-depth blog looking in detail at Professor Glantz’s short commentary and its supporting citations, examining thirteen claims that form the basis of his overall claim.  I am hoping the critique provided here will be a useful primer to some of the arguments in this controversial field.

For navigation, there is a table of contents. Continue reading “Vaping risk compared to smoking: challenging a false and dangerous claim by Professor Stanton Glantz”

Ten perverse intellectual contortions: a guide to the sophistry of anti-vaping activists

This puts it nicely:

Life is short and shorter for smokers. Just legalise vaping.

That statement is a plain-speaking and hyper-concise dissenting report from Andrew Laming MP, one of two dissenting reports from Australia’s recently-completed parliamentary inquiry into vaping  (The other dissenting report provides a model of clear, concise reasoning too, and, unusually, the dissent came from the committee chairman, signalling a welcome fracture in Australia’s political support for prohibition)

Though short, it is basically right and sufficient: no-one is trying to live forever; everyone is trying to enjoy the life they have; some people like the drug nicotine or don’t want to quit enough to stop using it; smokers die earlier because of smoke; vaping avoids the smoke problem and does not appear to create new material problems; so it follows that vaping should not be illegal. In fact, it should be encouraged.  It really is that simple.

The dissenting reports prompt me to raise the issue of simplicity versus sophistry in the debate over tobacco harm reduction. This has bugged me for years. Vaping and tobacco harm reduction is basically simple. The arguments raised against it by anti-vaping opponents are laden with sophistry.

This blog looks at ten forms of sophistry used by anti-vaping activists to fabricate and fuel faux controversy. It is longer than I would like,  but the subject is far from exhausted. Please dip in.

Continue reading “Ten perverse intellectual contortions: a guide to the sophistry of anti-vaping activists”

Professor Glantz makes an irresponsible and baseless claim about vaping risks

venturaquote

I am particularly concerned about a sweeping statement made by one of the most vocal activists in tobacco control, Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco. He asserts completely incorrectly and irresponsibly that a new study shows long-term vaping risk could equate to half the risk of smoking. This is a grotesque exaggeration.

Here I take a closer look at the claim and the study that supposedly lies behind it, looking at six failures in Professor Glantz’s reasoning: Continue reading “Professor Glantz makes an irresponsible and baseless claim about vaping risks”

Professor Glantz brings his anti-vaping crusade to Europe – I review his presentation

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome… Professor Glantz visits Europe

Regrettably, the influence of Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Fransisco is not confined to California or to the United States.  Last month he made a visit to Europe – to Austria in fact.  As good Europeans, we always take our American visitors seriously and listen to what they have to say. So I have done a review of the presentation he gave at the Austrian Acadamy of Sciences in Vienna.

Continue reading “Professor Glantz brings his anti-vaping crusade to Europe – I review his presentation”

Who will be duped by error-strewn ‘meta-analysis’ of e-cigarette studies?

Garbage
Done badly, meta-analysis can be a neat and scientific-sounding way of aggregating junk to create new and more convincing junk

[Note: backgrounder What is meta-analysis]

The Lancet Respiratory Medicine has been duped into publishing a ‘meta-analysis’ of e-cigarette studies authored by Professor Stanton Glantz and colleague [see Kalkhoran S, Glantz SA. E-cigarettes and smoking cessation in real-world and clinical settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet Respir Med].

The expert reaction has been swift and devastating: “not scientific”, “grossly misleading”, “a major failure of the peer review system” are amongst the comments from Professor Robert West, Professor Ann McNeill, Professor Peter Hajek, Linda Bauld of Cancer Research UK and Roseanna O’Connor of Public Health England. What’s behind this unusually strong condemnation? Continue reading “Who will be duped by error-strewn ‘meta-analysis’ of e-cigarette studies?”

Big Tobacco’s Little Helpers

Public health disinformation encourages regulation that protects the cigarette trade

This is a guest post by David Sweanor, Adjunct Professor of Law at University of Ottawa and lifelong public health campaigner,  Starts here…

Continue reading “Big Tobacco’s Little Helpers”

The Worst Letter of 2014 – a review

Click to view letter on The Lancet web site
Winner! The Worst Letter of 2014

The 13 December letter by Professors Glantz, McKee, Chapman and Daube published in The Lancet wins my prestigious Worst Letter of 2014 award. There now follows a detailed review…

Continue reading “The Worst Letter of 2014 – a review”

Misleading the public for their own good? Changing the warnings on snus

SnusWarningLabels
Misleading labels implicitly exaggerating risk?  These are the current U.S. snus warnings

What sort of ‘warnings’ should go on tins of snus? Modern snus use is probably around 98% less risky than smoking – but do the regulatory ‘risk communications’ in the form of these warnings really reflect that?  Do they give the consumer useful information that helps them make decisions about which risks they are willing to bear and the options they have to reduce risks associated with tobacco or nicotine use?   It’s an interesting time for these questions: the United States is in the middle of a process that might lead changes to these warnings on some snus packaging.

Continue reading “Misleading the public for their own good? Changing the warnings on snus”

Scientific sleight of hand: constructing concern about ‘particulates’ from e-cigarettes

diesel fumes
A source of environmental particulates – but nothing like e-cigarette vapour

The opponents of e-cigarettes have determined that ‘ultrafine particles’ or ‘particulates’ are an issue they can work with.  But this campaigning gambit, it turns out, involves a crude scientific sleight of hand. We’ll explore this by looking at some examples and the appropriate responses. Continue reading “Scientific sleight of hand: constructing concern about ‘particulates’ from e-cigarettes”

The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle applied

bullshit asymmety principle
The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle

There are three problems increasingly evident in ‘tobacco control’ science when it comes to tobacco harm reduction:

  1. Contrived and phoney research designed to support pre-existing policy preferences (see previous post).
  2. Spin by scientists and activists designed to create some sort of moral panic or adverse change in risk perception out of absolutely nothing.
  3. The exhaustion of rational, fair-minded and ethical actors arising from Brandolini’s law: the bullshit asymmetry principle – see his seminal tweet.

All three drain the energy and time of real scientists, consumers and legitimate public health advocates. They distort regulatory and legislative decisions and create false perceptions of risk in the media and general public. All are evident in the following study:

Goniewicz ML, Lee L.  Electronic Cigarettes Are a Source of Thirdhand Exposure to Nicotine Nicotine and Tobacco Research 2014.

Continue reading “The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle applied”