Anatomy of Misleading Science

Got an exercise for all y’all’s critical thinking skills. Here is a CNN article about a paper about vaping and quitting smoking. Your job is to figure out everything that’s wrong with it, and how that influenced the reporting. No checking Twitter, where it’s already been pretty thoroughly deconstructed.

10 points for every methodological problem, 5 points for every analysis problem, 1 point for every spelling and grammar problem. And go!

Don't have time to read the paper, but just from the article it seems like the cold turkey group would be more likely right at the start to be made up more by individuals either less addicted to nicotine or more dedicated to giving it up.

I'm no statistician, so I don't know about that paper, but from the article...

"The condition, now known as EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury) is strongly linked to e-cigarettes containing vitamin E acetate, a sticky oil substance that can cling to lung tissue."

So they STILL haven't admitted that the people that got sick were all vaping illegal, bathtub THC?

Vaping is for idiots, anyway.

How's that for a scientific analysis?

Or to put it even more succinctly...

John Castle.

The article neglects to mention that vaping makes you look like a fucking douche.

John Castle would have loved this thread.

10 points.

5 points.

10 points for Gryffindor!

Author(s) listed above/below/near the title.

Date of publication listed

Citations provided. Article (paper) presents stats that support their statements with links to the source of stats.

Potential conflicts of interest are noted.

Methodology is clear

Evaluated against other “quit-smoking” options


Totally not interested in the paper as I am not a smoker. But, the conclusions show vaping is no more or less effective than any other option. Less than 20K subjects and the results are within a reasonable 5% margin of error.


Excellent paper. All articles should be so clear.

Oh, my bad. I didn't evaluate the article. Which, yes, is totally misleading as the article seems to be saying that vaping has 0% effectiveness while the article says vaping has the same results as other measures tested.

-15 points.

color me surprised.

It's generous. Not only did you fail to point out the methodological and analytical issues, you jumped straight to the conclusions the conclusion the author and article wanted you to get to, even though it says nothing of the sort. You're a successfully hit mark here.

I read the fucking paper. Who reads articles? Those are all opinions. Still, I then read the article for you. But, I guess you missed this post.

"E-cigarettes work by heating a pure liquid called e-juice -- composed of flavorings, propylene glycol, glycerin and often nicotine -- until it vaporizes."

Not sure what the author means by "pure", or why she even used the term at all.

Maybe in the sense that all the ingredients are liquids at room temperature, therefore the sludge is "purely" liquid with no dissolved solids in suspension?

Indeed I did miss it. You can have 5 points back, for a score of -10. You drew the conclusion than the article was trying to present, but from an even wronger one. 0% effectiveness at what?

Maybe to alleviate any confusion that there is a non-Newtonian fluid inside, such as oobleck.

Or a more serious answer, some cannabis vape pens use wax rather than a liquid, so maybe differentiating that.

I mistyped. I didn’t draw any wrong conclusions. But, now I’m curious what you think you read.

Pretty sure you did. 0% effectiveness at what? Same results as what other measures at doing what?

The article implies that vaping has no effectiveness as far as quitting smoking. The paper doesn’t say that. The paper says vaping is not any more or less effective in helping a person quit smoking than the other methods that were tested in the study.

Can’t see how you think it says anything different unless you only read the article.

The paper said vaping is, indeed, less effective than quitting cold turkey by 8.something percent. But yeah...the article seems to say that vaping isn't effective at all, which is not what the paper said.

If I'm reading things properly, it looks like the study took place over the course of a year?

A year ain't shit when it comes to addiction.

I would have to agree with this, but from a marketing perspective something that helps you quit multiple times makes much more money than something that works forever. Who is going to pay you the most for your study? That would be someone looking to market a quit smoking product who can use your study to sell a product you will use multiple times to quit smoking.

Close. Half credit, 5 points.

I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident that the majority of people who switch from smoking to vaping aren't doing it as a stepping stone to being nicotine free...at least not in the short to medium run. They're just switching from something definitely majorly dangerous to something probably much less dangerous...probably. They still want their nicotine. Those people are who the vape companies get their bank from.

Nope, the paper does not say that. That's what the author of the paper would like you to believe it says, but that is not actually what it says. 0 points.

5 more points for the article analysis But no points for the paper analysis.