Wales stubs out smoking in public places

[bigboab]

Dr. Williams' contribution to your debate:

The public has become increasingly aware that the science behind manmade global warming is a fraud. But maybe Americans like bogus science in pursuit of certain public policy objectives. Let's look at it.

Many Americans find tobacco smoke to be a nuisance. Some find the odor offensive, and others have allergies or asthma that can be aggravated by smoking in their presence. There's little question that tobacco smoke causes these kinds of nuisances, but how successful would anti-smokers have been in a court of law, or public opinion, in achieving the kind of success they've achieved based on tobacco smoke being a nuisance?

A serious public health threat had to be manufactured, and in 1993 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped in to the rescue with their bogus environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) study that says secondhand tobacco smoke is a class A carcinogenic.

Why is it bogus? The EPA claimed that 3,000 Americans die annually from secondhand smoke, but there was a problem. They couldn't come up with that conclusion using the standard statistical 95 percent confidence interval. They lowered their study's confidence interval to 90 percent. That has the effect of doubling the margin of error and doubling the probability that mere chance explains those 3,000 deaths.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) said, "Admittedly, it is unusual to return to a study after the fact, lower the required significance level, and declare its results to be supportive rather than unsupportive of the effect one's theory suggests should be present." The CRS was being kind. This kind of doctoring of research results would get a graduate student expelled from a university.

In 1998, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer released the largest ever and best formulated study on ETS. The research project ran for 10 years and in seven European countries. The study, not widely publicized, concluded that no statistically significant risk existed for nonsmokers who either lived or worked with smokers.

During the late '90s, at a Washington affair, I had the occasion to be in the presence of an FDA official. I asked him whether he would approve of pharmaceutical companies employing EPA's statistical techniques in their testing of drug effectiveness and safety. He answered no. I ask my fellow Americans who are nonsmokers: Do you support the use of fraudulent science in your efforts to eliminate tobacco smoke nuisance in bars, restaurants, workplaces and hotels?

You say, "Okay, Williams, the science is bogus, but how do we nonsmokers cope with the nuisance of tobacco smoke?" My answer is that it all depends on whether you prefer liberty-oriented solutions to problems or those that are more tyranny-oriented.

The liberty-oriented solution has to do with private property rights, whereby the owner of property makes the decision whether he will allow smoking or not. If one is a nonsmoker, he just doesn't do business with a bar or restaurant where smoking is permitted. A smoker could exercise the same right if a bar or restaurant didn't permit smoking. Publicly owned places such as libraries, airports and municipal buildings, where ownership is ill defined, presents more of a challenge.

The tyranny-oriented solution is where one group uses the political system to forcibly impose its preferences on others. You might be tempted to object to the term "tyranny," but suppose you owned a restaurant where you did not permit smoking and smokers used the political system to create a law forcing you to permit smoking. I'm sure you'd deem it tyranny.

The public policy debate on smoking has been settled through bogus science. My question is, how willing are we to allow bogus science to be used in the pursuit of other public policy agendas, such as restrictions on economic growth, in the name of fighting global warming?


Dr. Walter Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics

I find the printing of this article unbecoming of you J2. It suggests that the people we have elected would stoop to implementing laws based of fallacy or fad.

Incidentally why does Dr Williams not use his own name at George Mason University?

[Mr JP Fugley]

So that people could smoke cannabis without breaking the law.

Where would they go to smoke Cannabis if smoking was banned everywhere.

Yes but you asked if they would campaign for it to be allowed. To which I replied yes.

You then asked why and I said so that they could smoke it without breaking the law.

If it was allowed they wouldn't be breaking the law, so I don't get your point.

[j2k4]

Dr. Williams' contribution to your debate:

The public has become increasingly aware that the science behind manmade global warming is a fraud. But maybe Americans like bogus science in pursuit of certain public policy objectives. Let's look at it.

Many Americans find tobacco smoke to be a nuisance. Some find the odor offensive, and others have allergies or asthma that can be aggravated by smoking in their presence. There's little question that tobacco smoke causes these kinds of nuisances, but how successful would anti-smokers have been in a court of law, or public opinion, in achieving the kind of success they've achieved based on tobacco smoke being a nuisance?

A serious public health threat had to be manufactured, and in 1993 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped in to the rescue with their bogus environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) study that says secondhand tobacco smoke is a class A carcinogenic.

Why is it bogus? The EPA claimed that 3,000 Americans die annually from secondhand smoke, but there was a problem. They couldn't come up with that conclusion using the standard statistical 95 percent confidence interval. They lowered their study's confidence interval to 90 percent. That has the effect of doubling the margin of error and doubling the probability that mere chance explains those 3,000 deaths.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) said, "Admittedly, it is unusual to return to a study after the fact, lower the required significance level, and declare its results to be supportive rather than unsupportive of the effect one's theory suggests should be present." The CRS was being kind. This kind of doctoring of research results would get a graduate student expelled from a university.

In 1998, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer released the largest ever and best formulated study on ETS. The research project ran for 10 years and in seven European countries. The study, not widely publicized, concluded that no statistically significant risk existed for nonsmokers who either lived or worked with smokers.

During the late '90s, at a Washington affair, I had the occasion to be in the presence of an FDA official. I asked him whether he would approve of pharmaceutical companies employing EPA's statistical techniques in their testing of drug effectiveness and safety. He answered no. I ask my fellow Americans who are nonsmokers: Do you support the use of fraudulent science in your efforts to eliminate tobacco smoke nuisance in bars, restaurants, workplaces and hotels?

You say, "Okay, Williams, the science is bogus, but how do we nonsmokers cope with the nuisance of tobacco smoke?" My answer is that it all depends on whether you prefer liberty-oriented solutions to problems or those that are more tyranny-oriented.

The liberty-oriented solution has to do with private property rights, whereby the owner of property makes the decision whether he will allow smoking or not. If one is a nonsmoker, he just doesn't do business with a bar or restaurant where smoking is permitted. A smoker could exercise the same right if a bar or restaurant didn't permit smoking. Publicly owned places such as libraries, airports and municipal buildings, where ownership is ill defined, presents more of a challenge.

The tyranny-oriented solution is where one group uses the political system to forcibly impose its preferences on others. You might be tempted to object to the term "tyranny," but suppose you owned a restaurant where you did not permit smoking and smokers used the political system to create a law forcing you to permit smoking. I'm sure you'd deem it tyranny.

The public policy debate on smoking has been settled through bogus science. My question is, how willing are we to allow bogus science to be used in the pursuit of other public policy agendas, such as restrictions on economic growth, in the name of fighting global warming?


Dr. Walter Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics

I find the printing of this article unbecoming of you J2. It suggests that the people we have elected would stoop to implementing laws based of fallacy or fad.

Incidentally why does Dr Williams not use his own name at George Mason University?

I find your perception of irony facetious, as do Mssrs. Williams, Olin, and Mason.

[vidcc]

So now we trust the opinion of a Professor of Economics to debunk climatologist on global warming and medical research on the effects of tobacco.

If his article stuck to the merits of what we do about such things it could have been half credible, but his "Scientific conclusion" is that the whole thing is a conspiracy.

Again...........A political argument does not debunk scientific studies.

[Mr JP Fugley]

Kev

I prefer the opinions of groups like the British Heart Foundation. Particularly when your source is discussing WHO reports from 1998. I suspect that substantial advances have been made in the 9 years since that time. Indeed there was probably more passive smoking going on then, I believe smoking was more common, which would make passive smoking more common as well. It would therefore be difficult to compare those subjected to it with those who were not.

http://www.bhf.org.uk/questions/inde...evel=1408#7497

[j2k4]

Kev

I prefer the opinions of groups like the British Heart Foundation. Particularly when your source is discussing WHO reports from 1998. I suspect that substantial advances have been made in the 9 years since that time. Indeed there was probably more passive smoking going on then, I believe smoking was more common, which would make passive smoking more common as well. It would therefore be difficult to compare those subjected to it with those who were not.

http://www.bhf.org.uk/questions/inde...evel=1408#7497

Do you mean to say the British Heart Foundation's opinion is to be looked upon as superior to that of the WHO.

Heathen.

So now we trust the opinion of a Professor of Economics to debunk climatologist on global warming and medical research on the effects of tobacco.

If his article stuck to the merits of what we do about such things it could have been half credible, but his "Scientific conclusion" is that the whole thing is a conspiracy.

Again...........A political argument does not debunk scientific studies.

Maybe not, but a logical argument surely can, especially when the science is of that distinctly specious type favored by Pope AlGore of the New Church of the Global Warming, but I digress...

Back to the subject of smoking, if you please.

[vidcc]

Maybe not, but a logical argument surely can, especially when the science is of that distinctly specious type favored by Pope AlGore of the New Church of the Global Warming, but I digress...

What constitutes "logical"?

Logical doesn't always mean correct. And no matter how "logical" you may feel a political argument is, it still does not refute what appears in your head to be an illogical scientific study.

Back to the subject of smoking, if you please.

Your quote brought the global warming part into the thread, not mine

The public has become increasingly aware that the science behind manmade global warming is a fraud. But maybe Americans like bogus science in pursuit of certain public policy objectives. Let's look at it.

[Mr JP Fugley]

Do you mean to say the British Heart Foundation's opinion is to be looked upon as superior to that of the WHO.

Heathen.

Would you be disappointed if I posted something along the lines of "Given the circumstances, the age of the report and the source you quote, yes."

Obviously if that's the case I won't post it.

[j2k4]

Do you mean to say the British Heart Foundation's opinion is to be looked upon as superior to that of the WHO.

Heathen.

Would you be disappointed if I posted something along the lines of "Given the circumstances, the age of the report and the source you quote, yes."

Obviously if that's the case I won't post it.

No, I intended his column to present of a piece.

He is attempting to make the point that nothing has been proven to a scientific certainty, stepping outside the arena of American-generated study only to include the WHO study, which, absent a closer look, one would by default assume to conclude second-hand smoke to be the health scourge to end all health scourges, when in fact it does not.

Had he been writing his column for consumption beyond our borders, he may well have included the opinion you favor, and then modulated his argument to suit.

Perhaps I should have presented his column with a "for U.S. consumption" caveat, but I would have thought doing so insulting to attending company.

That means you.

[Mr JP Fugley]

Would you be disappointed if I posted something along the lines of "Given the circumstances, the age of the report and the source you quote, yes."

Obviously if that's the case I won't post it.

No, I intended his column to present of a piece.

He is attempting to make the point that nothing has been proven to a scientific certainty, stepping outside the arena of American-generated study only to include the WHO study, which, absent a closer look, one would by default assume to conclude second-hand smoke to be the health scourge to end all health scourges, when in fact it does not.

Had he been writing his column for consumption beyond our borders, he may well have included the opinion you favor, and then modulated his argument to suit.

Perhaps I should have presented his column with a "for U.S. consumption" caveat, but I would have thought doing so insulting to attending company.

That means you.

Are the effects of passive smoking different in America. That seems unlikely.

Why would he have written it differently were it written to include a non-American audience. Unless of course he realised that others would see it for the mendacity it was and take him to task over it.

Plenty has been proven about the effects of passive smoking. FFS if you accept that smoking has an adverse effect on health then even if you only do it intuitively you must accept that inhaling the same chemicals passively must have an effect.

Unless of course it's jut harmful when you put it thro' a filter.