This is a tough one for me.
As a dedicated skeptic, who holds truth as the highest value and believes that the best means of determining the truth is through objective verification (IOW, the scientific method), I love studies. And as an e-cig enthusiast, advocate, and e-cig business owner I especially love studies that tell me what I want to hear, that E-cigs are exactly the less harmful alternative that we all believe them to be.
And therein lies the trap of confirmation bias.
A competitor (who I shall not name but you can find in the links) recently released a PR blast about a study on e-cigs they funded, conducted by Dr. Keith Ablow: Dr. Keith Ablow Releases Study Regarding Effectiveness of Electronic Cigarettes - PR Newswire - The Sacramento Bee.
The study was a very positive one for e-cig users, apparently. "After 90 days, 70 percent reported they had stopped using tobacco products entirely. Of those who stopped using tobacco, 47 percent reported that they had stopped using electronic cigarettes and were non-smokers at the end of the three month trial. Of the remaining individuals, 60 percent reported they had reduced their tobacco usage significantly." I like those results. But....
Read more here: Dr. Keith Ablow Releases Study Regarding Effectiveness of Electronic Cigarettes - PR Newswire - The Sacramento Bee
Dr. Ablow is well known as a FOX news "expert" which might give the study some unearned (IMO) credibility, but Dr. Ablow is a psychiatrist, not an expert on tobacco or nicotine addiction, and not at all a research scientist. He's a media "expert", and whether or not you trust his reporting, it's just a fact that he has no expertise or credibility in original research, so there's no good reason to give his study any real weight. Despite the fact that the study results are exactly what I would expect, I have a hard time trusting them and really wish that someone with more scientific credibility had been at the helm. And that bit about almost half of the subjects quitting e-cig use, and thus nicotine consumption altogether, seems a bit too much like an idealized narrative crafted to placate those who demonize nicotine as an intolerable vice.
Of course, as long as the methodology, data collection, and statistical analysis are all sound, none of that will matter. If the data is valid, it will speak for itself. But at this point, the study itself doesn't seem to have been published, so we just don't know.
So all I can say at this point is, it sounds good, but I wouldn't advise anyone to use it in support of e-cigs until we know more. Not until we can at least verify that the study is sound.
As a dedicated skeptic, who holds truth as the highest value and believes that the best means of determining the truth is through objective verification (IOW, the scientific method), I love studies. And as an e-cig enthusiast, advocate, and e-cig business owner I especially love studies that tell me what I want to hear, that E-cigs are exactly the less harmful alternative that we all believe them to be.
And therein lies the trap of confirmation bias.
A competitor (who I shall not name but you can find in the links) recently released a PR blast about a study on e-cigs they funded, conducted by Dr. Keith Ablow: Dr. Keith Ablow Releases Study Regarding Effectiveness of Electronic Cigarettes - PR Newswire - The Sacramento Bee.
The study was a very positive one for e-cig users, apparently. "After 90 days, 70 percent reported they had stopped using tobacco products entirely. Of those who stopped using tobacco, 47 percent reported that they had stopped using electronic cigarettes and were non-smokers at the end of the three month trial. Of the remaining individuals, 60 percent reported they had reduced their tobacco usage significantly." I like those results. But....
Read more here: Dr. Keith Ablow Releases Study Regarding Effectiveness of Electronic Cigarettes - PR Newswire - The Sacramento Bee
Dr. Ablow is well known as a FOX news "expert" which might give the study some unearned (IMO) credibility, but Dr. Ablow is a psychiatrist, not an expert on tobacco or nicotine addiction, and not at all a research scientist. He's a media "expert", and whether or not you trust his reporting, it's just a fact that he has no expertise or credibility in original research, so there's no good reason to give his study any real weight. Despite the fact that the study results are exactly what I would expect, I have a hard time trusting them and really wish that someone with more scientific credibility had been at the helm. And that bit about almost half of the subjects quitting e-cig use, and thus nicotine consumption altogether, seems a bit too much like an idealized narrative crafted to placate those who demonize nicotine as an intolerable vice.
Of course, as long as the methodology, data collection, and statistical analysis are all sound, none of that will matter. If the data is valid, it will speak for itself. But at this point, the study itself doesn't seem to have been published, so we just don't know.
So all I can say at this point is, it sounds good, but I wouldn't advise anyone to use it in support of e-cigs until we know more. Not until we can at least verify that the study is sound.
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