I can't really respond to this properly; I'm certain there are forum rules against the sort of profanity required to really cover the subject in detail and getting rage-banned from my new favourite corner of the Internet isn't going to do me any good long-term.
I was going to rip the paper to shreds, but actually the article by Dr. Siegel covers most of the salient points very well. He's being characteristically understated in his critique of the conclusions drawn, but as an academic I suppose he's obliged to keep it polite. You've gotta ask the question: why the HELL didn't they use a second experimental group with PG only; no flavourings, no active ingredients? He didn't raise the fact that the control group's *lack* of change in pulmonary resistance couldn't be shown to be statistically significant, and - in my opinion - dropped a clanger by failing to point out that not only were the statistically-significant changes still within the normal range for the baseline measurements (he does point out they were sub-clinical, but how many lay readers will get that?) and that at several of the resistance frequencies employed, there was NO significant change, either between experimental subjects nor between control and experimental groups.
But the real howler is that they haven't disclosed the raw data. I'm not going to speculate on why this might be, I'll just say that we have no way of knowing whether just one freaky outlier in the experimental group skewed the results. Even the most laid-back of lay readers can understand that in a sample set this tiny, testing for a very small effect, a single anomalous result could render the whole data set worthless.
The authors cherry-picked their own data, from a tiny group, in order to support a tenuous conclusion drawn about a sub-clinical effect
that was not the one they were looking for. At best, they've established - via a "soft outcome" (or surrogate endpoint, if you prefer) - that "something happens when you use an e-cigarette, which may or may not be harmful". They don't know what, they don't know why, and the experiment was (deliberately?) constructed such that a useful assessment of the conclusion they
did draw can't be made. All in all, it's a fairly typical tupenny-ha'penny study conducted on a shoestring budget; the only noteworthy thing about it being the level of reporting associated with it.
I don't want to be unfair to the authors; they applied a valid statistical toolset to the data they had, they were probably working with a budget equal to a week's supply of fags, there were probably reasons outside their control that meant they couldn't do this with a larger group of people and there may have been nothing untoward in the data set that led to them not including it... but I am frustrated that I can't see for myself.
Under other circumstances I'd start writing about science reporting, an area I COULD justifiably exercise my wrath, but then I
would get banned
EDIT: One last thing I can't let slide, because I can say this and still be absolutely fair... The authors
deliberately set up a straw-man construct, which they then attacked:
Quote
E-cigarettes are marketed as potentially reduced tobacco exposure products. The product resembles but is not a cigarette in design or function and is marketed as “safer” than a conventional one. However, to date debate exists as to the scientific evidence for their claims of no health related ramifications.
Now THAT IS sneaky, underhanded, mendacious and wrong. In point of fact, in most of the world a manufacturer would get jumped all over by the authorities for claiming that there are "no health-related ramifications" from the use of e-cigarettes. "Safer than cigarettes"
is not the same thing as "no health-related ramifications". The former statement is what is generally claimed; the latter statement is what was attacked by the authors of the study. Therefore I can, for this one thing, call them out and say "you B*ST*RDS!".
And if you think pronouncing asterisks is easy, let me tell you it's not
Edited by BigJ, 15 January 2012 - 03:40 PM.
1
Boadacia, on 15 January 2012 - 02:03 PM, said:
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