Worst Published Paper Of The Year?
Acta Medica Lituanica has published the worst paper of the week, and possibly the decade, that is nothing more than a work of emotive fiction which ignores all of the facts and evidence
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by Dave Cross
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The paper’s authors: Andrew Bush, Thomas Ferkol, Algirdas Valiulis, Artur Mazur, Ivane Chkhaidze, Tamaz Maglakelidze, Sergey Sargsyan, Gevorg Boyajyan, Olga Cirstea, Svitlana Doan, Oleksandr Katilov, Valeriy Pokhylko, Leonid Dubey, Edita Poluziorovienė, Nina Prokopčiuk, Vaida Taminskienė, and Arūnas Valiulis. None of these names have appeared in previous POTV articles but we feel we might hear from some of them again soon.
Error #1: Framing vaping as a Big Tobacco plot
“The purpose of this review is firstly to summarise the effects of tobacco, and especially nicotine… and then discuss how it relates to the latest attempts of the tobacco industry to profit from nicotine addiction, namely electronic cigarettes,” they write. (1)
Vaping was invented by independents, and the market was created by independents and consumers.
Error #2: Misattributing claims
“These products are not merely ‘harmless water vapor’.” Nobody in the vape industry or any vapers say this, the quote has been lifted from the United States Surgeon General.
Error #3: Presenting data extrapolations in place of actual studies
“More worrisome, because of perceived lower health risks, e-cigarette use has increased among pregnant women, increasing exposure of the unborn child to nicotine and other toxic inhalants.”
This statement runs contrary to everything we know from research produced by the likes of Professor Linda Bauld. She found that vaping had no impact on birth weight or abnormalities and the NHS recommends switching from smoking if pregnant mothers are unable to quit tobacco use.
Error #4: Conflating independent companies with Big Tobacco again
“Increasingly, the industry is owned or controlled by tobacco companies, which is of itself sufficient to make anyone suspicious about motives.”
It is no surprise that the tobacco industry wishes to gain a foothold in the one thing that has done what these academics have never managed – to bring about the death of the cigarette. If we need to address suspicious motives then why did this group write this piece of evidence-denying garbage?
Error #5: Fictional statements presented as fact
“The main aim of e-cigarettes is nicotine addiction”.
This doesn’t need to be addressed at all.
Error #6: Ignoring Paracelsus
“Analyses of 18 different flavoured, nicotine, and no-nicotine ecigarette cartridges showed detectable levels of known carcinogens and toxic chemicals”.
The dose makes the poison, not the presence – although their cherry-picked studies will not own up to this.
Error #7: Making up ridiculous “facts” that can be debunked in seconds
They write: “The seven undeniable facts about electronic cigarettes and vaping:
- Nicotine, which is found in most e-cigarettes, is a drug of addiction, and harmful to the foetus and child; even if e-cigarettes only contained nicotine, they should be banned
- If you do not know the contents of an e-liquid, how can you say it is safe? Especially when you do know that quality control is poor, and known carcinogens can be detected
- An extensive range of lung disease are caused by acute and short-term vaping, and these far exceed any acute toxicity of smoking cigarettes
- If the acute and short-term effects of vaping are worse than those of tobacco, how can we possibly rationally believe that the chronic toxicity of e-cigarettes is less than that of tobacco
- The toxic effects of vaping overlap with those of tobacco, but e-liquids have additional toxicity not shared with tobacco – e-liquids are not a diluted down version of tobacco
- E-cigarettes are being actively and deliberately marketed to young people; they will lead to a generation of nicotine addicts, which will be a catastrophe, and whether they are a gateway to smoking is irrelevant
- E-cigarettes are equivalent or inferior to standard smoking cessation strategies in all but a small majority of adult smokers. Generally, they are not being marketed as a smoking cessation aid.”
Suffice to say, it’s complete nonsense. The rest of the paper is littered with such nonsense and is linked below if you fancy a laugh. Unfortunately, not only did those responsible receive a salary, but others will point to the paper as evidence that they are correct to oppose vaping.
References:
- Unfriendly Fire: How the Tobacco Industry is Destroying the Future of Our Children - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8311841/
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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