Earlier this month, news outlets all over the world reported breathlessly on new research which claimed to find that e-cigarette users were 15 percent more likely to have a stroke at young age than smokers.
News sources as diverse as the Daily Mail in the UK, the South African Sunday Times, and all major U.S. TV stations picked up on it ensuring that a large portion of the global population were exposed to this bad news.
The problem is that this “research” was at best, highly misleading and, at worst, plain wrong.
First, this was not new published research as a casual reader might assume, but instead an unpublished conference presentation given a boost by the American Heart Association (AHA) which is explicitly opposed to reduced risk alternatives to smoking such as vaping.
As Jonathan Swift once wrote, “falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.” So while millions globally were being misled by the fear-peddling headlines, far fewer people would have read expert rebuttals which came soon after from the Science Media Centre.
Martin Cullip – Townhall – 2021-11-27.
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