According to the newspaper headlines of late, teenagers should be kept away from cigarette exposure because of this worrying statistic.
A survey of over 216,000 adults found that over 60% of them had been offered and tried a cigarette at some point, and of these, nearly 70% went on to become regular smokers. The conclusion drawn was that there are strong links between trying a cigarette ones to be sociable and going on to develop it as a habit.
This of course ended up in the newspapers with headlines such as “One cigarette is enough to get you hooked”. The Mail Online, Britain’s go-to newspaper for your important health news (and I’m being ironic here) went a step further, saying one puff from a cigarette was enough to get you hooked for life. Never mind if you had one draw of a cigarette, felt the nicotine reach your lungs, then coughed in revulsion at the bitter aftertaste and swore that you would never again try a cigarette again. The Mail Online bets you would return to the lure of the dark side, seduced by its nicotine offers.
I digress.
While we all know that any event, repeated many times becomes a habit, the statistics in this case are a little dubious.
The study was conducted by Queen Mary University (nothing dubious in itself) but among the various concerns were what you might call the high conversion rate. Nearly 70% of those who tried a cigarette once went on to smoke regularly as a habit.
I’m not sure why the 70% is worrying. In fact, I wonder why it is not 100%! Surely, if you asked a habitual smoker, “Have you smoked a cigarette before?”, the answer would be a resounding “Yes”!
Unless you have caught someone in the act of sneakily smoking his virgin cigarette. But he wouldn’t yet be a habitual smoker.
Let’s establish the facts of the matter again.
216,000 adults were surveyed.
130,000 of them (60% of the adults) had tried a cigarette before.
86,000 (40%) have never smoked before.
Of the 130,000 who had tried a cigarette before, 81,000 (70%) went on to become regular smokers.
49,000 (30%) of those who tried a cigarette before either did not go on to smoke at all or did not smoke regularly.
Another way of looking at the data would be as follows:
216,000 adults surveyed.
135,000 adults do not smoke regularly or at all. Some did try once in the past.
81,000 adults smoke regularly and these people have obviously tried a cigarette before.
Suddenly the data doesn’t look sexy anymore.
The data was an umbrella studywhich means data was pooled rather than created from scratch through surveys. As previously examined, the final outcome is also dependent on the integrity of the original source.
Bias can also creep in because the data has not been directly obtained and inferences have been drawn.
For example, the influence of e-cigarettes and vaping on the results have not been scrutinised, because some of the data may have existed before then.
Before we leave it at this, here is another example of data bias:
216,000 adults were surveyed.
130,000 of them (60% of the adults) had tried a cigarette before.
86,000 (40%) have never smoked before.
We can conclude that 100% of the 86,000 who have never smoked a cigarette in the past have never smoked a cigarette.
You can see the absurdity more when it’s spelt out more in words than in numbers.
If research is costly and expensive, in terms of money and time, then why is it wasted on these?
One reason is that it keeps academics and researchers in their jobs, if they produce findings that are financially low-cost but can stave off the question of what they actually do, and their purpose.
This kind of research is the academic version of the newspaper filler article, one that columnists generate based on the littlest of information, in order to fill the papers with “news”, that actually mask the fact that they are there to sell advertising space. And in this, columnists and researchers are at times colluding for the same purpose. Vultures who tear at the carcass of a small rodent and then serve up the bits as a trussed up main meal.
Unethical? Who cares, it seems. Just mask the flawed process and don’t make it too obvious.