BBC: Smoking 'may play schizophrenia role'
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33464480
Watch how the author of this BBC article misrepresents the study, then inserts a quote that shows that he has not been paying attention, then he reappears to misrepresent it in another way. After that I guess he got further distracted, and went off in another direction.
The argument is that if there is a higher rate of smoking before schizophrenia is diagnosed, then smoking is not simply a case of self-medication.
Dr James MacCabe, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's, said: "It's very difficult to establish causation [with this style of study], what we're hoping that this does is really open our eyes to the possibility that tobacco could be a causative agent in psychosis, and we hope this will then lead to other research and clinical trials that would help to provide firmer evidence."
Clearly most smokers do not develop schizophrenia, but the researchers believe it is increasing the risk.
That first misrepresentation fully implies that smoking causes schizophrenia, since this research is showing that there
IS a higher rate of smoking before schizophrenia is diagnosed. He also seems unaware of the most common and well-known logic fallacy with his invalid if/then assumption. The second misrepresentation changes the researchers' belief that it
MAY POSSIBLY be increasing the risk, to belief that "
IT IS increasing the risk". So he freely changes is to if and maybe to is. No wonder he seems dizzy. He's going in circles.
Later in the article:
Prof Michael Owen, the director of the Institute of Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University, said the researchers had made a "pretty strong case" that smoking may increase the risk of schizophrenia.
"The fact is that it is very hard to prove causation without a randomised trial, but there are plenty of good reasons already for targeting public health measures very energetically at the mentally ill."
I don't trust this guy's plans of targeting. It doesn't sound to me like his targeting will be anywhere near as humane as THR. "Pretty strong case." Give me a break. I'm going to register at the Lancet and read the full text.
And then the rethinkers, who seem hopelessly lost:
The charity Rethink Mental Illness said: "We know that 42% of all cigarettes smoked in England are by people with mental health problems, and so any new findings about the link between smoking and psychosis is a potential worry."
Knowledge is bad. I didn't know that. Stop learning stuff, everybody.
