“In June 2019, a paper by prominent US academics found that people who used e-cigarettes were at greater risk of a heart attack. Eight months later, the paper was retracted. When a paper is retracted it means we can’t trust its results. It’s like being unpublished. The problem is, the paper still exists. It is possible that if the initial data was publicly available, the flawed analysis may not have made it to publication in the first place. It means being aware of “hot stuff bias” where topics that get a lot of media attention attract more bad science than those that are less on the radar. We must all do better to make sure we don’t repeat history when it comes to e-cigarettes. That includes being open and critical about science and thinking twice when we read stories about hotly contested topics in healthcare. Alarming headlines are catchy, but misinformation might actually kill us.”
NICOTINE: “Nicotine is not the harmful ingredient in cigarettes, or in e-cigarettes. It is addictive, so it gets its bad name because it’s part of what makes people keep smoking. But it’s the other ingredients in cigarettes that cause the increased risk of death and disease.”
ARTICLE LINK:
Vaping and heart disease: setting the record straight
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