Self-Discrediting Study

Shocking! Outrageous!

Here's a Reuters article accusing Philip Morris of hiding its research into the health effects of smoking. The company says these are old, recycled charges. What's really interesting is what the researchers from the medical journal had to say.

(Which journal? The Lancet, the same journal whose claim that 100,000 died as a result of the invasion of Iraq has been thoroughly debunked.)

This time they've destroyed their credibility all by themselves. I don't have to do any real work, all I have to do is point out the obvious:

The scientists at the German facility only reported some of their findings, [McKee] added.

"In particular, the unpublished reports provided evidence that second-hand smoke is even more harmful than mainstream smoke, a finding of particular relevance given the industry's continuing denial of the harmful effects of passive smoking," McKee and Swiss colleagues said in the journal.

Second-hand smoke is even more harmful than smoking directly? Since every smoker is also a second-hand smoker by virtue of breathing the air near themselves, am I to believe that the enormous health differences between smokers and second-hand smokers are a result of the smaller harm of direct smoking, while the tiny health differences between nonsmokers and second-hand smokers are due to the large harm of second-hand smoking?

These people take themselves seriously. The mind reels.