When Is A Straight Line Not A Straight Line?

I don't know where the usual half-wits who put their name to BBC website smoking articles have disappeared to, they seem to have been rather quiet of late. As such, today's breathless paraphrasing of a classic case of tobacco control industry 'science by press release' was left to Adam Brimelow to present.

There was a sharp fall in the number of children admitted to hospital with severe asthma after smoke-free legislation was introduced in England, say researchers. 

A study showed a 12% drop in the first year after the law to stop smoking in enclosed public places came into force.

Well, actually, it didn't but I'll come to that later.

In the meantime, let's revisit tobacco control's idea of what is significant and what is not; along with what is solely due to the smoking ban, and what has absolutely nothing to do with it.

You see, Anna 'pay me and I'll say what you want' Gilmore produced a study in 2010 which proved {cough} beyond any doubt that there had been a statistically significant reduction in heart attacks which was entirely due to the triumph of the smoking ban. Here's what it looked like.


Dramatic, isn't it?

Whereas, this is what fellow career anti-smoker, Linda Bauld, described as statistically insignificant after being paid £47,000 by the government to do so.

UK Pub Closures 2004-2009

Pub closures, you see, had nothing to do with the ban whatsoever. In fact, they haven't even been closing at all according to ASH.

However, the pro-tobacco lobby’s claims that the smoking ban has led to pub closures are unfounded. In 2007, the year England went smokefree, the number of licensed premises for “on sales” of alcohol actually increased by 5% and there has been a net increase in the number of people reporting going to pubs since the smokefree law came into effect.

That's correct. The media; the government who are holding crisis debates on the demise of pubs; the public who see them boarded up on a daily basis; and the BBPA who track the numbers, are all deluded. It's just a dream.

So back to today's big news.

Here is what that dramatic reduction in "children admitted with severe asthma" looks like (from the report, not the press release Brimelow churned out). For your safety, please hold onto a fixture or fitting in case this knocks you sideways.

A bit disappointed? Hey, don't blame me, I just pass on this stuff.

You see, contrary to Brimelow's artless reportage, there wasn't a drop at all. There was merely a slight deviation from what some highly-partial professional tobacco controller had predicted (and even that doesn't show a significant reduction). And who was this tobacco controller?

Dr Glantz supervised the statistical analysis, interpreted the findings, reviewed and revised the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted.

Yes, it's the smoke-obsessed aircraft mechanic Stanton Glantz, arguably the foremost anti-smoking crank on the planet and a man for whom no data is too challenging to torture; no lie too big to tell; and who has never been known to produce anything in the last four decades which could remotely be described as objective science.

His latest wheeze, for example, is to ignore entirely all real life claims as to the effectiveness of e-cigs. Not because they weren't valid, but simply on the basis that they don't fit in with his pre-determined agenda on behalf of the pharma industry.

And Brimelow bought it, probably without even a cursory glance at the report or a Google search on its authors. That's Adam Brimelow of the internationally respected news service known as the BBC.

Allegedly.