2017/02

One of the many reasons I have a blog is so that I can spout, mostly nonsense, into the ether my thoughts on a particular topic that piques my interest. It just so happens that this blog has a specific focus. Most of the posts on these pages cover the various bits of “science” - mostly bad science - that grab sensationalist headlines, that do nothing more than to confuse a highly nuanced subject. Most of the time I am fairly factual, though quite often I will, quite frankly, take the piss.

You may have noticed that I’ve been talking about Snus a bit recently. It appears that I’m not the only one. Now, if you do a search on Aunty Beeb for mention of Snus, you won’t find very much from the last twelve months. In fact before the most recent (junk) article, the last time Aunty Beeb mentions Snus in an article dates back to May 2015 when there was quite a bit of a to do about a certain EU official and a teeny bit of bribery.

There’s a new study doing the rounds at the moment. Well, I say “study” but it isn’t really. It’s yet another survey, with participants selected from eight southeastern Connecticut high schools from spring 2015. “This study is the first systematic evaluation of the use of dripping among teens,” says the lead author Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine.

That does beg the first question, why is a professor of psychiatry even looking at e-cigs? I suspect I already know the answer, as do most of my regular readers.