"2014 worst published study award" - a new contender

On Wednesday I wrote about a study that I thought would win the "2014 worst published study award" quite easily. But reading Clive Bates' blog today I'm glad I didn't put any money on that: http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2418. I'm not going to go through what's wrong with this study, as Clive does an excellent job at that. So please read his article.

I must say that it surprises me a bit that someone actually manages to get such an article published. First of all the the numbers they present shouldn't really surprise anyone with just the tiniest bit of common sense. Of course a label telling you that something is risky would, unless you have any other information to go by, make you think that something is more risky than before you saw the label. I mean... doh! And then there is the conclusion:

In conclusion, this study provides the first evidence against allowing “reduced harm” or “lower risk” labels on alternative tobacco products. While further data should be collected to validate our results, our findings provide initial evidence that endorsements such as the one proposed by RJ Reynolds may have similar effects to the prohibited “FDA Approved” label. Warning labels may be an effective way to decrease interest in e-cigarettes among non-users of tobacco. Regulatory agencies should consider implementing graphic warning labels for smokeless tobacco and investigate use of warning labels for e-cigarettes.

This pretty much shows why this so called study is done: They're trying to figure out how to label e-cigarettes to make them the least attractive. So actually their data (for once) supports their conclusion 100%. Because if you hate e-cigarettes, and you don't care how much you'd have to lie to get rid of them, and you don't care one tiny bit that you're actually preventing people from getting rid of their smoking habit, then yeah... telling people they'll get cancer from e-cigarettes is probably a good way to start. However, the fact that someone needed to do a study to figure this out proves that they are unable to use any kind of common sense and hence their statements should be considered totally useless and ignored in every possible way.