2017/08

I know. I borrowed the title from jewel robber extraordinaire Dick Puddlecote. He won’t mind. It is, in fact, thanks to the illustrious Puddlecote that I became aware of another pile of utter rubbish.

A quick glance at the PubMed abstract piqued my (slightly addled) science brain. I’ve written about the very low nicotine cigarette debacle before, and that (at the time) Ms Cramer of RSPH had given a talk at the E-Cigarette Summit (2015) on the idea of “de-nicotinised” e-cigs and how, by some miracle, that led to fewer cigarettes being smoked but more vaping (the ol’ self-titration theory being proven once again).

Here we go again. Another “gateway” study has hit the media, only this time, the study originates from the UK and not the gateway crazy US.

I had prior warning that this study was coming late at night, but sadly with work being such a crapfest, I ended up reading it cross-eyed and making ridiculous mistakes in interpretation.

Before we take a closer look at the study itself, I want to draw attention to this statement in the introduction. It"s rather important.

Typology. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (sorry Mirriam-Webster, I’m English, not American; although here, both have the same definition) is “A classification according to general type, especially in archaeology, psychology, or the social sciences.”

Amusingly, it can also be defined as “The study and interpretation of types and symbols, originally especially in the Bible.” As I’m in no way going to be analysing the Bible (the greatest work of fiction ever devised), the former definition applies. Here, it refers to this paper, and after reading the abstract my initial reaction was to award it with the “Pointless Research Award”.