Damning verdicts on e-cigarette research

Recent U.S. research that has been widely reported to have shown that e-cigarettes are ineffective for smoking cessation has been branded as “complete garbage” by a highly respected public health professor.

Researchers from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF (the University of California at San Francisco) published a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine that purported to show that e-cigarettes were ineffective for smoking cessation.

But a blog by Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, has debunked both the methodology used and the conclusions drawn.

Siegel’s blog is at http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/new-study-on-electronic-cigarettes-by.html.

Seigel was not the only person to attack the research. The American Council on Science and Health decried the fact that it was a “phony summary of a phony study” that got most of the attention.

The council’s verdict is at http://acsh.org/2014/03/jama-headlines-blare-gullible-press-swallows-hype-e-cigarettes/.