Prue Talbot study grossly misrepresents ECF postings on health impacts of e-cigarettes

[AttyPops]

Speaking of lack of consent....I would assume/suspect it's also a violation of the forum policy to data mine like that.

It's particularly troubling without valid statistical method. They cannot draw any conclusions without stratified sampling of the entire user base and doing some leg work, which should be planned ahead of time. Just pulling posts out of a "symptom/health question" sub-forum means little to nothing. Particularly without followup...were the symptoms transitory and later attributed to quitting smoking? Was it related to preexisting health issues? How many had no symptoms and didn't post? etc.

ETA: Although to be fair...they did say:

While our study demonstrates the value of an infodemiological approach, it has several limitations. The online forums may be biased toward negative reporting, and the positive effects are probably under-reported in our analysis.

So...IDK. I'd rather see them do a survey approach for e-cig users rather than this data-mining approach of forum questions.

For example, I had mouth sores attributed to one vendor's VG...but none since swapping it out. Thus...it was the VG of that vendor...not e-cigs in general. Kinda like if you had a reaction to clove cigs, but not cigs in general. You know?

 

[StormFinch]

Marking my spot, not awake enough to form a coherent post. *waves*

 

[AttyPops]

And...I'm not sure it's invalid to simply come up with a list of common "issues" with e-cig use..with some associated frequency data. Although frequency should be of the user base as a whole. Overall, I don't view the report as particularly negative, just not as well constructed as a random survey of all e-cig users would be. And... somehow...quitting smoking symptoms have to be factored into it.

What concerns me more is the use of this limited report to further jump to conclusions...kinda snowball at the top of a hill phenomenon. See the "preliminary results at a conference" link Bill provided in the 1st post. Sad.

 

[TomCatt]

The saddest thing about this 'study' is that it took time and money away from some more legitimate research.


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[Fanny Pack]

Just started closely reading this article; but then started to wonder if they read any of the 'does vaping make you fart' threads and had to take a break


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I think any Letter to the Editor should mention some of the fart threads, and ask if they were included. Might also talk about people posting that their boogers have gotten sticky!

 

[DC2]

Sorry, but this "study" is plain old hogwash. It insults my intelligence.

This study insults my pet rock's intelligence.

 

[Petrodus]

 

[TomCatt]