Tobacco Science (July 15, 2014)
Anyone who is old enough (meaning, sadly, my age) can remember many years of watching increasingly sweaty tobacco company executives proffering "evidence" that "proved" the safety of smoking in the face of an ongoing avalanche of actual data establishing its dangers. So what that wonderful phrase means, of course, is research done on behalf of a special interest to find “proof” that its particular pet income producer is in fact NOT harmful versus overwhelming amounts of credible research that shows otherwise.
There is a lot of tobacco science around. Every large industry is hip to keeping its public image respectable and knows that scientific credibility can help in that. And it’s not easy to detect. For example, it’s become common practice to produce pro-industry stories that look like news items and give them for free to cooperative newspapers and TV stations that then broadcast or publish them as actual news stories. The business of medicine in the U.S. currently sucks up over 17% of our GDP, but for spending more per person on medical care than any other country we get an international health ranking in every area well below those of most other industrialized countries. So there's probably more than a little tobacco science in conventional American medical practice.
Since tobacco science studies by definition go against the general trend of thought on a particular subject, they tend to be deemed newsworthy and thus garner a fair amount of public attention that they don’t necessarily merit. It can be difficult for a layperson to judge whether or not a new study is truly groundbreaking, or if it’s just a self-serving flash in the pan. There are three things that you can look at, though, that can help to steer you in the right direction even if you know little about the subject.
1) Who funded the study? Self-interest isn’t a reason to automatically discount research, but it’s one thing to look at.
2) How many people were involved, and for how long? A study that follows 20,000+ people for decades (yes, there are such studies) is going to produce results more worthy of attention than one that studies 20 college students over a weekend.
3) Does it contradict the bulk of evidence on a subject? Regardless of what the YouTube video makers would have you believe, if there are decades of good work establishing something (like too much saturated fat increases heart disease), one study saying otherwise is probably wrong.
--dr. diane holmes
Copyright © 2014
Anyone who is old enough (meaning, sadly, my age) can remember many years of watching increasingly sweaty tobacco company executives proffering "evidence" that "proved" the safety of smoking in the face of an ongoing avalanche of actual data establishing its dangers. So what that wonderful phrase means, of course, is research done on behalf of a special interest to find “proof” that its particular pet income producer is in fact NOT harmful versus overwhelming amounts of credible research that shows otherwise.
There is a lot of tobacco science around. Every large industry is hip to keeping its public image respectable and knows that scientific credibility can help in that. And it’s not easy to detect. For example, it’s become common practice to produce pro-industry stories that look like news items and give them for free to cooperative newspapers and TV stations that then broadcast or publish them as actual news stories. The business of medicine in the U.S. currently sucks up over 17% of our GDP, but for spending more per person on medical care than any other country we get an international health ranking in every area well below those of most other industrialized countries. So there's probably more than a little tobacco science in conventional American medical practice.
Since tobacco science studies by definition go against the general trend of thought on a particular subject, they tend to be deemed newsworthy and thus garner a fair amount of public attention that they don’t necessarily merit. It can be difficult for a layperson to judge whether or not a new study is truly groundbreaking, or if it’s just a self-serving flash in the pan. There are three things that you can look at, though, that can help to steer you in the right direction even if you know little about the subject.
1) Who funded the study? Self-interest isn’t a reason to automatically discount research, but it’s one thing to look at.
2) How many people were involved, and for how long? A study that follows 20,000+ people for decades (yes, there are such studies) is going to produce results more worthy of attention than one that studies 20 college students over a weekend.
3) Does it contradict the bulk of evidence on a subject? Regardless of what the YouTube video makers would have you believe, if there are decades of good work establishing something (like too much saturated fat increases heart disease), one study saying otherwise is probably wrong.
--dr. diane holmes
Copyright © 2014