After months of pressure from the scientific community, the American Heart Association's academic journal on Tuesday evening retracted a widely circulated
vaping study, which claimed that using e-cigarettes increased the likelihood of having a heart attack.
Last June, the authors, Stanton Glantz and Dharma Bhatta of the University of California San Francisco, stated in the original study that
vaping and smoking cigarettes posed a similar risk, while doing both at the same time was an even more dangerous option. Following its publication in the summer, the peer-reviewed research was referenced by major news organizations, including CNN, Yahoo News, and USA Today.
In a statement explaining the retraction, editors at the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) expressed worry that the study may have been based on misleading data.
"The editors are concerned that the study conclusion is unreliable," they wrote.
