Warning: junk reporting of junk science threatens individual freedom

Friday May 6, 2011

Another day another scary health study, says Brian Monteith. But that’s the way of the bully state: junk science, junk reporting followed by junk laws.

You think you might get used to them but this latest health scare really took the biscuit. Do the journalists reading reports on the newswire ever use their critical faculties before cutting and pasting them into their newspapers or websites?

The Daily Mail (2 May) reported the story like this:

In the first study of its kind, researchers have found that boys who inhale secondhand tobacco smoke at home may experience significant levels of raised blood pressure. In later life the study revealed that this could lead to high blood pressure, or hypertension, and an increased risk of heart disease. However, in girls, passive smoking appeared to be associated with a lowering of blood pressure.

Actually the study didn’t say this, what it actually said was that the research suggested that being children of parents that smoked might lead to high blood pressure for boys but lower blood pressure for girls (my italics).

Or, put another way, that being around parents that smoked might lead to lower levels of blood pressure for girls but higher blood pressure for boys. (See the difference?)

The Mail added that:

The research involved more than 6,400 young people. The results showed that boys aged eight to 17 who were exposed to second hand tobacco smoke had significantly higher blood pressure than those who did not inhale smoke.

Of course there was no way of telling what the children inhaled, how much and how often – it is purely by their association of living with a smoker, a survey that the children then completed, and some surveys of cotinine levels at a random time. Do we know anything else about the lifestyles of the children, how much ice cream they ate, how they exercise, their genetics, their exposure to other environmental factors such as diesel fumes? No.

Is it possible that the environmental lifestyle of a certain class or group of people or hereditary circumstances of the boys that displayed higher blood pressure were really a factor? Er, well, yes, that’s possible too.

The Mail went on:

Dr Jill Baumgartner, from the University of Minnesota, said: ‘These findings support several previous studies suggesting that something about female gender may provide protection from harmful vascular changes due to second-hand smoke exposure. An important next step is to understand why.

Suggesting? Something? May? Why?

In other words we’ve spent a heck of a lot of money and we really don’t know any more than we did when we started – so can we have more money to conduct further research and keep us all in a job?

Blood pressure of children living with a smoker was increased by 1.6 millimetres of mercury in boys, but lowered by 1.8 millimetres in girls.

The reported difference in blood pressure is one per cent either way to healthy levels so it hardly seems meaningful – unless of course the boys and girls are separated so that the boys are found to be worse off, which was clearly the intention of the study. How can we surmise the motive? Because the researchers misreport their own study, saying in their press release that association with a smoker had no effect on girls’ blood pressure when their evidence showed it had a greater effect on girls than it did on boys. Unfortunately for the researchers it was a positive effect.

“While the increases in blood pressure observed among boys in our study may not be clinically meaningful for an individual child, they have large implications for populations,” said Dr Baumgartner.

Let’s get that straight, the results are not clinically meaningful to individuals but they are to people as a group? Well, they either are meaningful or they are not. But the lack of logical thinking gets worse…

She added: “The relationship between second-hand smoke exposure and blood pressure observed in our study provides further incentives for governments to support smoking bans and other legislation that protect children from second-hand smoke.”

Wait a minute; surely this study was good news for girls – were it to be believable? Surely any legislation to, say, ban adults from smoking in their own homes (or cars?) would be discriminatory against girls? In fact should girls not be asking their parents to light up around the house even if they don’t smoke? Maybe Dad could just leave a cigarette or two sitting in an ashtray?

Then there’s the clincher:

The findings were presented today at the Pediatric Academic Societies’ annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, US. Researchers analysed data from four health surveys conducted between 1999 and 2006 by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tobacco smoke exposure was assessed from children’s own reports and levels of the nicotine break down chemical cotinine in their bodies.”

Ah, it’s one of those studies … a study of a study with a mixture of approaches.

Never mind that the scientists can’t prove a direct link between tobacco smoke and so many diseases, never mind that the balance of studies of passive smoking repeatedly question any link to diseases – an unchallenging article masquerading as journalism reporting a challengeable study masquerading as science will henceforth be used to justify a smoking ban in homes to protect boys, even though the same study suggested the opposite effect for girls that the researchers can’t explain away.

That’s the way of the bully state, junk science, junk reporting then junk laws. This won’t be the end of it …

Brian Monteith is author of The Bully State: The End of Tolerance, published by The Free Society (2009) and available on Amazon