James Austin’s rapid response defames me and all the members of the
1995 Australian National Health & Medical Research Council's working
party on passive smoking in his claim that we "deleted" data "to fit our
agenda".
Austin bases his claims on a fax I sent to other members of the group
in 1995 [1] where I raised two concerns about an early draft chapter of a
report we were writing on the health effects of passive smoking in
Australia. The draft contained a table that showed estimated deaths in
Australia from passive smoking exposure calculated for age and sex bands.
The numbers shown were often expressed as fractions of deaths. My fax
argued that "fractional" annual deaths (ie: death rates of less than one
per age band) would prove difficult for journalists and the public to
understand. For example, I would be surprised if many non-epidemiologists
would be able to decipher what "0.5" deaths per annum meant (one death
every two years).
There are many perfectly correct ways of expressing the same data in
more comprehensible forms, and my fax urged nothing more than that we
should realise that the table would cause unnecessary confusion. I
subsequently argued in the committee that we should recast the data in a
more understandable way. Austin’s claim that this means we then "deleted"
the data is grossly offensive and wrong, as the final report revealed. It
is standard procedure for all draft papers to undergo changes and editing.
Often these are to improve clarity of understanding.
Second, I pointed out that our very conservative methodology
estimated there to be some 93 annual deaths from ischaemic heart disease
caused by passive smoking in Australia, whereas a recent American estimate
had put the corresponding US figure at 62,000. Since then the US
Environmental Protection Agency has published an 8 volume report
estimating some 65,000 deaths. I advised the committee -- correctly – that
our report would be therefore "out of step with every international
review's conclusion on this subject". In fact, the final report included
the same very conservative estimates which resulted from our only
considering domestic (spousal) exposure data in people who have never
smoked. We did not factor in workplace exposures, nor deaths among ex-
smokers.
My fax rehearsed the sort of questions that we were likely to get
from those who were familiar with the much higher US mortality estimates.
If we had really wanted to massage results to suit “our agenda” why then
would we have persisted in using our ultra-conservative methodology which
was guaranteed to produce low estimates of deaths?
Rapid Response:
Response to James Austin
James Austin’s rapid response defames me and all the members of the
1995 Australian National Health & Medical Research Council's working
party on passive smoking in his claim that we "deleted" data "to fit our
agenda".
Austin bases his claims on a fax I sent to other members of the group
in 1995 [1] where I raised two concerns about an early draft chapter of a
report we were writing on the health effects of passive smoking in
Australia. The draft contained a table that showed estimated deaths in
Australia from passive smoking exposure calculated for age and sex bands.
The numbers shown were often expressed as fractions of deaths. My fax
argued that "fractional" annual deaths (ie: death rates of less than one
per age band) would prove difficult for journalists and the public to
understand. For example, I would be surprised if many non-epidemiologists
would be able to decipher what "0.5" deaths per annum meant (one death
every two years).
There are many perfectly correct ways of expressing the same data in
more comprehensible forms, and my fax urged nothing more than that we
should realise that the table would cause unnecessary confusion. I
subsequently argued in the committee that we should recast the data in a
more understandable way. Austin’s claim that this means we then "deleted"
the data is grossly offensive and wrong, as the final report revealed. It
is standard procedure for all draft papers to undergo changes and editing.
Often these are to improve clarity of understanding.
Second, I pointed out that our very conservative methodology
estimated there to be some 93 annual deaths from ischaemic heart disease
caused by passive smoking in Australia, whereas a recent American estimate
had put the corresponding US figure at 62,000. Since then the US
Environmental Protection Agency has published an 8 volume report
estimating some 65,000 deaths. I advised the committee -- correctly – that
our report would be therefore "out of step with every international
review's conclusion on this subject". In fact, the final report included
the same very conservative estimates which resulted from our only
considering domestic (spousal) exposure data in people who have never
smoked. We did not factor in workplace exposures, nor deaths among ex-
smokers.
My fax rehearsed the sort of questions that we were likely to get
from those who were familiar with the much higher US mortality estimates.
If we had really wanted to massage results to suit “our agenda” why then
would we have persisted in using our ultra-conservative methodology which
was guaranteed to produce low estimates of deaths?
1. http://www.worldsmokersday.org/lies/simon_chapman.htm
Competing interests:
I am editor of Tobacco Control.
Competing interests: No competing interests