This thread continues from one started in Media News, linked below, which changed into a discussion of clinical trials, and is therefore better located here.
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@Bill....I said "controlled clinical trial" and you cite a study based on 40 people with no control group...i.e. nothing to compare with the results of the 40 that used e-cigs. A controlled clinical smoking cessation trial will ideally recruit a large number of smokers and randomly allocate them to either (a) the intervention of interest..eg e-cigs or (b) some comparison treatment...could be a placebo e-cig, could be an alternative treatment (e.g. nicotine inhaler), but the idea is to have something meaningful to compare with the results of the main intervention group. Unfortunately you cannot meaningully compare the results in one tiny study of 40 people with the results of other studies of different types of smokers (different countries, different levels of dependence and motivation, different behavioral intervention etc etc). Thats why we randomize within the study. Thats how you can be fairly confident that the people in one group are comparable to the people in the other...as they were allocated to each treatment on the basis of chance (like the toss of a coin).
Also dont imply that anyone assumes that people who say they quit smoking by using e-cigs are liars. Nobody assumes that. Its just reality that lots of people saying on the internet that they quit smoking one way or another does not cut it as scientific evidence that the method increases people's chances of quitting. Its a sign that the method might be effective...and worthy of further study, but nothing more.
My understanding is that most of the folks chatting on this site use a username thats not necessarily identical with their everyday name. If Im mistaken about that, then Im honored to have spoken to someone named God Almighty (Im glad to know she exists after all). So you dont have to be a genius to figure out who JFjardine02 from Hershey is, or to use a new thing called Google to find out where he works, what he has published, sources of funding etc. It is simplistic to think that because someone has done work for pharma companies (as well as universities, charities, hospitals, non-profits etc etc) they can therefore no longer use their brain cells for anything else but selling those companies' products. I'm not quite sure how publishing case reports of psychotic episodes while using the patch, or poor results from pharma products in clinical trials, or positive effects on smoking cessation from snus and e-cigs fits in with that idea? JF
Admin
www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/media-general-news/239369-penn-state-video-half-right-anyway-5.html
____________________________________
@Bill....I said "controlled clinical trial" and you cite a study based on 40 people with no control group...i.e. nothing to compare with the results of the 40 that used e-cigs. A controlled clinical smoking cessation trial will ideally recruit a large number of smokers and randomly allocate them to either (a) the intervention of interest..eg e-cigs or (b) some comparison treatment...could be a placebo e-cig, could be an alternative treatment (e.g. nicotine inhaler), but the idea is to have something meaningful to compare with the results of the main intervention group. Unfortunately you cannot meaningully compare the results in one tiny study of 40 people with the results of other studies of different types of smokers (different countries, different levels of dependence and motivation, different behavioral intervention etc etc). Thats why we randomize within the study. Thats how you can be fairly confident that the people in one group are comparable to the people in the other...as they were allocated to each treatment on the basis of chance (like the toss of a coin).
Also dont imply that anyone assumes that people who say they quit smoking by using e-cigs are liars. Nobody assumes that. Its just reality that lots of people saying on the internet that they quit smoking one way or another does not cut it as scientific evidence that the method increases people's chances of quitting. Its a sign that the method might be effective...and worthy of further study, but nothing more.
My understanding is that most of the folks chatting on this site use a username thats not necessarily identical with their everyday name. If Im mistaken about that, then Im honored to have spoken to someone named God Almighty (Im glad to know she exists after all). So you dont have to be a genius to figure out who JFjardine02 from Hershey is, or to use a new thing called Google to find out where he works, what he has published, sources of funding etc. It is simplistic to think that because someone has done work for pharma companies (as well as universities, charities, hospitals, non-profits etc etc) they can therefore no longer use their brain cells for anything else but selling those companies' products. I'm not quite sure how publishing case reports of psychotic episodes while using the patch, or poor results from pharma products in clinical trials, or positive effects on smoking cessation from snus and e-cigs fits in with that idea? JF
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