Their Favourite Trick

In their desperation to defame e-cigs, it seems the dinosaur section of the tobacco control industry has stopped scraping the barrel and is now crawling underneath it with the cockroaches instead.

From The Telegraph:

[The Lancet] accused [Public Health England] of falling short of its mission to protect public health. 

The Lancet revealed that three of the 11 authors of the original study were paid advisors for the e-cigarette industry. The editors of the journal European Addiction Research even issued a warning alongside the article saying there was a ‘potential conflict of interest.

Yep, just the usual. The Lancet piece doesn't bother to challenge the evidence itself, merely choosing to sling ad hominems and smears around instead, the prime tactic of bent tobacco controllers everywhere. Except this time they are attacking their own colleagues. It never ceases to amaze me how very low these disgusting rimlickers can get.

What has been apparently ignored is that the PHE report referenced 185 different pieces of research, yet the Lancet seems to think that because 3 of 11 researchers on one single paper have a potential conflict of interest - which is not even itself proof of bias - the whole thing should be disregarded. All I can say is that those 3 researchers must possess incredibly forceful personalities if they are able to convince the other 8 to abandon all principles and put their name to what The Lancet hints to be a biased whitewash.

It's also staggeringly ironic that The Lancet article puts such store on conflicts of interest but is written anonymously, thereby refusing to identify if the author has conflicts of interest of their own. Say, for example, it was penned by some fat Irish twat at, I dunno, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine or somewhere, wouldn't it be worth us knowing in order that any potential conflicts of said fat Irish twat or the school itself could be examined? The Lancet - in an astonishing illustration of hypocrisy - obviously thinks not.

Lead author of the study being criticised by The Lancet, David Nutt, has defended it on his blog, saying:

The Lancet experts or others who do not like the results should look to provide funding to repeat the analysis. A repetition would be particularly timely now the evidence base for ENDS has grown.

You mean do proper science, David? Why would any tobacco controller worth his salt want to do that when it's far simpler to gain headlines with baseless smears and pathetic innuendo?

Once again, it would appear that The Lancet is proving that the 'public health' industry has only the most flimsy of connections to health these days.