Over the last few months, I have been following up on the many claims made by the Tobacco Control Lobby regarding the dangerous effects of tobacco smoking. My investigations led me to the conclusion that almost everything being presented as evidence for tobacco's deleterious effects is junk science. I have also discovered just how many authoritarian followers are out there and just how hate filled and vicious they can be when their core doctrines on the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke are challenged.

What is junk science?

According to YourDictionary.com junk science is "A cluster of assertions, publications, and experts that have the appearance, but not the actuality, of a scientific specialty." A more detailed discussion follows here:

The problem ... is that defining a "finding" as junk science relies on our having a "clear and unproblematic understanding of what science is, and just as importantly what it is not". We might think we do. It approximates to that observation-hypothesis-prediction-experiment-new-observation-amendment-(peer review)-theory cycle with which we are all fairly familiar. But, many things we call science, such as experiments that cannot be repeated independently, the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] experiments, large-scale clinical trials, climate modelling etc., do not fit and cannot even be forced to fit this cycle. Moreover, of the many thousands of scientific papers out there that comprise the scientific literature, very few, but for some worthy exceptions, are ever repeated by other scientists.

In reality, observation studies married with statistics, or flawed clinical studies using animals with a predisposition to cancer, are being used to prove whatever the research sponsor wants to prove. It's junk science. All that is required is to tweak the questionnaire, fiddle with the statistical models, bias the clinical tests and you can have the answer you want. But only so long as that answer is politically correct. Try to use this method to prove something held to be "bad" or "wrong" in the minds of the Public Health Sector, and all hell will break loose.

My approach has been to take an article reporting something about tobacco smoking, read it in detail, look at the research data behind the article, and attempt to read and dissect it in much detail in order to see if it qualifies as science according to the definition of the scientific method.

Epidemiology

Where and how is junk science applied in the study of tobacco smoke? To answer that, let's start with a quote from "Studies of Cancer in Humans": "The available knowledge on the relationship between tobacco usage and a variety of human cancers is based primarily on epidemiological evidence." So, what is epidemiology?

Originally, the word described the study of epidemics to determine the cause, distribution and control of disease in populations. The CDC describes it in lofty terms:

Epidemiology is the study (scientific, systematic, data-driven) of the distribution (frequency, pattern) and determinants (causes, risk factors) of health-related states and events (not just diseases) in specified populations (patient is community, individuals viewed collectively), and the application of (since epidemiology is a discipline within public health) this study to the control of health problems.

The epidemiological studies relating to tobacco smoking and its denormalisation that I have studied are based on observational studies (predominantly questionnaires), to which statistical formulae are then applied. The construction of, and the contents of, these questionnaires, is the area where abuse and fraud are most easily introduced. The methodology applied follows these general guidelines:

Define what you want to prove

Select a study population

Draw up a questionnaire

Gather the data

Prepare a hypothesis

Publish it as scientific fact

All the definitions are quite insistent that epidemiology is a genuine science, but let's examine that assertion. Back in 1960, at least, the scientific method had four steps:

Observation and description of a phenomenon (visually or with the aid of scientific equipment).

Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon in the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

Test the hypothesis by analyzing the results of observations or by predicting and observing the existence of new phenomena that follow from the hypothesis. If experiments do not confirm the hypothesis, the hypothesis must be rejected or modified (go back to Step 2).

Establish a theory based on repeated verification of the results.

It was the completion of these four steps that made it science. 'Scientific' epidemiology studies today complete steps 1 and 2, then they declare a result and go to press. This is where studies becomes junk science. They're half-baked; they do not conform to the scientific method.

Epidemiology is the principal tool in the hands of the public health sector, which is responsible for the denormalisation of smoking and what appears to be the persecution of smokers. They also seem to be gearing up to go after obese people, drinkers of soda and alcohol, and consumers of fats and red meat. If their studies on tobacco are anything to go by, these areas of research also are likely to be a rich core to mine for junk science.

Correlation Does Not Prove Causation

Many studies that apparently 'prove' the dangers of tobacco smoking do demonstrate some correlation between smoking and disease, but as the maxim goes, "correlation does not prove causation". For example, if we did a study on the game of basketball, we could come up with an association between playing basketball and being tall. There is a correlation in the data between these two facts. If we concluded our study and issued a press release that said "playing basketball will make you tall", we would be behaving like the Tobacco Control people: presenting a correlation as causation, which is simply wrong. The best we could do with that data is to form a hypothesis for clinical testing. Similarly, with tobacco smoke and lung cancer, a study may note a correlation between the two, but that is a million miles away from proving anything. You still need steps 3 and 4 in order for it to be real science.

"Smoking-Related" Diseases

The phrase "smoking-related diseases" is much abused. Let's be very clear. There are no truly smoking-related diseases. Think about it for one moment. Can you name one single disease or illness that is only contracted by smokers? The answer is no. Every disease supposedly caused by smoking is also contracted by people who do not smoke. So if we have 100 people with lung cancer, and 50 of them smoke and 50 do not, it cannot be proven that the 50 smokers would not have contracted the disease if they did not smoke. In other words, some smokers may in fact get lung cancer for some other reason not related to their smoking.

the rest: http://www.sott.net/article/315356-The-epidemic-of-junk-science-in-tobacco-smoking-research