Re: Low cigarette consumption and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: meta-analysis of 141 cohort studies in 55 study reports
Dear Editors,
As a researcher (not medicine) I understand the urge to gain attention, even beyond the scientific community, through one's studies. This is more likely if doing a study on the impact of "just one cigarette" than on the health risks of smoking in general.
However, this is also more risky. In the case of the last published study in your journal, this risk led to serious deviations from good scientific practice, which in my opinion, should be made explicit for readers, especially because the results are reported in media for the general public (that is why I know of them).
The most important problems:
I had the opportunity of checking only a limited number of studies used in the meta-analysis: all of those reported only categories of smokers of less than 10 cigarettes (to compare it with heavy smoking). According to the authors this is treated as smoking 5 cigarettes. In the tables of the article and in the title of the editorial this is treated as equivalent to smoking exactly 1 cigarette per day!
There are several other problems which are beyond this quick response.
In any case it should be clear that excactly 1 cigarette is not the same as smoking up to 10 cigarettes! Obviously the health impact will be quite different. But this study is implicitly assuming that "one" equals "up to 10"!
Again: getting attention should not sacrifice good scientific practice!
With best regards,
Johannes Lehner
Competing interests:
No competing interests
27 January 2018
Johannes M. Lehner
Prof.
Institute of Organization Science, Johannes Kepler University Linz
Rapid Response:
Re: Low cigarette consumption and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: meta-analysis of 141 cohort studies in 55 study reports
Dear Editors,
As a researcher (not medicine) I understand the urge to gain attention, even beyond the scientific community, through one's studies. This is more likely if doing a study on the impact of "just one cigarette" than on the health risks of smoking in general.
However, this is also more risky. In the case of the last published study in your journal, this risk led to serious deviations from good scientific practice, which in my opinion, should be made explicit for readers, especially because the results are reported in media for the general public (that is why I know of them).
The most important problems:
I had the opportunity of checking only a limited number of studies used in the meta-analysis: all of those reported only categories of smokers of less than 10 cigarettes (to compare it with heavy smoking). According to the authors this is treated as smoking 5 cigarettes. In the tables of the article and in the title of the editorial this is treated as equivalent to smoking exactly 1 cigarette per day!
There are several other problems which are beyond this quick response.
In any case it should be clear that excactly 1 cigarette is not the same as smoking up to 10 cigarettes! Obviously the health impact will be quite different. But this study is implicitly assuming that "one" equals "up to 10"!
Again: getting attention should not sacrifice good scientific practice!
With best regards,
Johannes Lehner
Competing interests: No competing interests