Critical Scientists

Scientists sceptical of Tobacco Control methods and practice

Although there are many more scientists, beyond those listed here, who disagree with current Tobacco Control policies, few dare expose their dissent. Some typical complaints here:

- There are no body bags filled with those who have developed tumors or heart disease as a result of second-hand smoke. The body bags are filled, however, with scientists and physicians who dare go against the anti-smoking lobby and state the obvious – the science isn’t there. Dr. Terry Simpson

- I compare many aspects of ETS epidemiology in the U.S. with pseudoscience in the Soviet Union during the period of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Overall, this paper is intended to defend legitimate research against illegitimate criticism by those who have attempted to suppress and discredit it because it does not support their ideological and political agendas. Hopefully, this defense will help other scientists defend their legitimate research and combat "Lysenko pseudoscience." Dr. James Enstrom

- I was driven from my last academic position by a calculated concerted campaign of efforts to censor my THR research and make my life unpleasant – and that of my students (yes, they attacked my students) and supporters. Prof. Carl V. Phillips

- This is McCarthyism in action. Quelling debate. Stifling opposition. Expelling and blacklisting anyone who dares express dissent. No wonder the tobacco control movement has gone off the deep end in its fanaticism. Anyone who tries to stop it knows that they will be censored or expelled. You have no choice but to go along with the groupthink. Dr. Michael Siegel

Below is a list of some scientists who dared make their disagreements public. Often these scientists are retired and dare to speak out only because they are no longer vulnerable to any consequences imposed by the dictatorial Tobacco Control community.

Arnett Jr., Jerome C.

Pulmonologist, Elkins, West Virginia. Policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and scientific advisor to the American Council on Science and Health.

- The abuse of scientific integrity and the generation of faulty "scientific" outcomes (through the use of pseudoscience) have led to the deception of the American public on a grand scale and to draconian government overregulation and the squandering of public money.

• Source: Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger

Bourque, Jean-Jacques

Retired psychiatrist, Montreal, Canada.

• Author of Écrasons la cigarette pas le fumeur

- The idea that is promoted by the Quebec government, that second-hand smoke is more dangerous than the smoke inhaled by someone who is smoking, is completely off the rails.

• Source: Smoking defended by Quebec doctor

Button, Phil

GP and anaesthetist, UK.

- I have worked in the health service as a GP and an anaesthetist for 23 years. Bans have been supported by antismoking groups. These groups have driven their debate with the invention of "passive smoking". They have used this tool to convince many that smoking is harmful to non-smokers. This is pure fiction as all the available scientific evidence fails to demonstrate any such phenomenon as "passive smoking".

• Source: House of Commons Health Committee Smoking in Public Places

Chaouachi, Kamal

Tobacco researcher specializing in medical anthropology. Holder of a post-graduate diploma in Tobacco Science from the University of Paris (1998). Taught hookah science to French doctors (University of Paris XI–XII, 2006–2010). Scientific collaborator of various research centres in Asia, Africa and Europe. Paris, France

- Since prohibitionists are not capable of producing quality evidence, they rely on quantity so that each new "study" can contain sentences like "There is an accumulation of evidence that" environment[al] tobacco smoke kills, etc.… and the not less classical ending call for funding: "More research is needed."

- Besides, they have themselves set the criteria for considering acceptable “evidence”. For instance, who controls the so­ called evidence published in WHO reports? The WHO Tobacco Study Group (TobReg) experts of course. Who are those experts? The same who are to be found in the editorial boards and peer­ reviewers lists of numerous journals supposed to provide the evidence at the grass­root level. This is a vicious circle, a global trick, a global hold up of science.

• Source: Prohibition Through the Hookah Looking­-Glass

Denson, Ken

Medical researcher Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation, UK (deceased).

- The scientific evidence for any deleterious effect of ETS is wholly false. It is so tenuous and equivocal that similar evidence would not [be] seriously considered. The mean exposure alone of the passive smoker is only 1/500th of that of the active smoker. The decision as to whether ETS is harmful to others should be made in a Court of Law.

• Source: House of Commons Health Committee Smoking in Public Places

Di Pierri, Vincent Riccardo

Philosopher and PhD psychologist, author of Rampant Anti-smoking Signifies Grave Danger: Materialism Out of Control.

- In the hands of epidemiology, the term "cause," which is the strongest in scientific parlance, has been reduced to the fostering of superstitious belief (mental dysfunction) and is flung about the medical literature and the media with reckless abandon. The medico-materialist bias and the misguided attempt to coerce societal change on the basis of what is a “statistics madness” can well be characterized as a contemporary form of witchdoctoring. One needs to be reminded regularly that this conduct is being produced by a supposed scientific discipline and, even more absurdly, a supposed health authority. ...

- There are many nonsmokers who will happily sit around an open indoor-fire, or in a restaurant that obviously has an operating kitchen (i.e., cooking-smoke). Although ambient smoke can be quite visible in such settings, it produces no troubling. Yet, let a lit cigarette appear and panic and an eradication procedure ensue, and protected by the superiority syndrome. This reflects the deluded, superstitious, belief that tobacco smoke is somehow very different from these other sources of smoke, magically endowed with all manner of dangerous propensities: In typical settings none of this smoke, from whatever source, poses a danger to a normative range of functioning. These deluded beliefs are the result of a relentless healthist propaganda, i.e., iatrogenic.

• Source: Rampant Anti-smoking Signifies Grave Danger: Materialism Out of Control

Dunn, John Dale

Physician, Attorney, and Policy Advisor to The Heartland Institute and the American Council on Science and Health. He has been a civilian emergency medicine faculty physician at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, Fort Hood, Texas, since 2003. Fort Hood is the largest United States Army base and the home of the 1st Cavalry and 4th Infantry Divisions. Since 2005, he has been Adjunct Instructor-Military/Emergency Medicine, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Maryland.

- As an emergency physician, I am a toxicologist by training and necessity, I know that the anti smoking physicians are campaigning to eliminate cigarette smoking, and couldn’t be bothered by a lack of good science on second hand smoke.

• Source: On the passive smoke fraud

Enstrom, James E.

PhD Epidemiology, Master of Public Health, as of 2012 in ideological battle with medical school administration to keep his position at David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. Founder and president of the Scientific Integrity Institute.

- My research suggests, contrary to popular claims, that there is not a causal relationship between ETS and mortality in the U.S. responsible for 50,000 excess annual deaths, but rather there is a weak and inconsistent relationship. The popular claims tend to damage the credibility of epidemiology.

• Source: Defending Legitimate Epidemiologic Research: Combating Lysenko Pseudoscience

Even, Philippe

Pulmonologist, president of the Necker Research Institute, now retired, Paris France.

- They have created a fear based on nothing.

- As a civil servant, dean of the largest medical faculty in France, I was held by my duty to confidentiality. If I had deviated from official positions, I would have had to pay the consequences. Today, I am a free man.

• Source: Le Parisien (Translated into English, Dutch)

Feinstein, Alvan

(1925 - 2001). Clinician, researcher and epidemiologist who made significant impact on clinical investigation, especially in the field of clinical epidemiology that he helped define. Since 1991 he was the Sterling Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, the highest academic distinction at Yale University. He published more than 400 scientific papers and wrote six major textbooks, some of which are among the most widely referenced books in clinical epidemiology.

Alvan Feinstein was a harsh critic of the passive smoking theory, which he referred to as "anti-smoking evangelism". In an article he cited a leader of the public health community for privately admitting this to him:

"Yes, it's rotten science, but it's in a worthy cause. It will help us get rid of cigarettes and become a smoke-free society."

- In meta-analyses of passive smoking studies, the investigators have complied with almost none of the scientific guidelines established for this type of research: A fundamental rule in criteria for causality is that the evidence from different studies consistently goes in the same direction. In the investigations of passive smoking, however, the various studies are contradictory, some going in positive directions and others not.

The inconvenient failure of the evidence to comply with a prime requisite of scientific reasoning for causality, however, has not inhibited the causal accusations. The "prosecution" has simply ignored the inconvenient results and emphasized those that are ... "helpful".

• Source: A Critique: Justice, Science, and the "Bad Guys"
• Source: Alvin R. Feinstein, wikipedia

Frenk, Hanan

Psychologist, Tel Aviv University, Israel.

- Whereas smoking is a persistent behavior that is often difficult to quit, the causal role of nicotine in this behavior is far from clear. In fact, the evidence for the contention that nicotine is instrumental in limiting smoking is at least as strong, if not stronger, than for the hypothesis that nicotine causes smoking.

• Co-author of A Critique of Nicotine Addiction
• Nicotine lectures

Gori, Gio Batta

Epidemiologist and toxicologist, fellow of the Health Policy Center in Bethesda, Md. He is a former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention.

- The abiding mystery is why so many have acquiesced for

so many years, when it must have been manifest that the story of ETS risks is without any testable support. The alleged justification is that all is for the higher goal of abolishing cigarettes and tobacco, even though bans have been only marginally effective in reducing the prevalence of smoking, while leading to most

odious and socially unfair prohibitions.

• Source: The Fraud of Environmental Tobacco Smoke Risks

Grieshaber, Romano

From the year 2000 until retirement in March 2011, Prof. Dr. med. Romano Grieshaber was executive director of prevention and research of the association for food and restaurants (BGN) and is an Honorary Professor of Applied Prevention and Health Promotion at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. He was a board member of the Research Society for Applied System Safety and Health (FSA), a member of the International Social Security Association (ISSA) and CEO of the Center for Interdisciplinary Prevention (KIP) of the University of Jena.

Prof. Dr. med. Romano Grieshaber is non-smoker and the Author of the book "Passivrauchen: Götterdämmerung der Wissenschaft" (published by PubliKom Z.) in which he openly disputes the sacrosanct dogmas of the WHO and debunks Tobacco Control Science. In describing his book Grieshaber has said:

- Die wissenschaftliche Diskussion über Passivrauch wurde zu Unrecht für abgeschlossen erklärt. Ich rufe die Fachwelt, aber auch die interessierte Öffentlichkeit dazu auf, sie auf Basis von Fakten noch einmal neu zu beginnen. Mit dem Buch will ich die Debatte anstoßen.

(- The scientific debate about secondhand smoke has wrongly been declared concluded. I call on the experts, but also the interested public, to revisit the question on the basis of facts. I hope my book will stimulate debate.)

• Source: Das Interview – Passivrauchen-Götterdämmerung der Wissenschaft

Jenkins, Roger

Scientist working with Oak Ridge National Laboratories, specializing in air quality measurement and analysis. Author of the "Black Dog" study, the "16 Cities" study, and a study on "Restaurant and Tavern Workers" among others, Jenkins has been criticized by the Tobacco Control Industry for serving as an expert witness against them in legal hearings and for having accepted Tobacco Industry funding (through the Center for Indoor Air Research) for some of his research. His research however has never been successfully criticized for its content. When the actual findings of his research are contrasted with those of similar research carried out under Tobacco Control funding, one finds that the technical readings are not all that dissimilar: rather, it is the fact that Jenkins puts those findings into proper perspective, and offers more properly scientific interpretations of them, that riles Tobacco Control.

- A well-known toxicological principle is that the poison is in the dose. It's pretty clear that the environmental tobacco smoke dose is pretty low for most people.

Source: Exposures to second-hand smoke lower than believed, ORNL study finds

Kabat, Geoffrey C.

Senior epidemiologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City. Author of Hyping Health Risks, Columbia University Press, 2008.

- A doctrine is built up that is antithethical to the openness that is a precondition for scientific discourse. What is objectionable is that these voluminous and authoritative-appearing reports convey the message that passive smoking is a major cause of fatal disease, which few scientists believe to be the case.

• Source: Hyping Health Risks: The Controversy Over Passive Smoking, page 175

Geoffrey Kabat is also featured on our anti-tobacco Advocates page where some of his history, and stances in favor of the Tobacco Control Industry, are examined.

Levy, Robert A

Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies, The Cato Institute; Adjunct Professor of Statistics for Law, Georgetown University Law Center and Rosalind B. Marimont, former mathematician and scientist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly the Bureau of Standards) and the National Institute of Health.

- Junk science has replaced honest science and propaganda parades as fact. Our legislators and judges, in need of dispassionate analysis, are instead smothered by an avalanche of statistics - tendentious, inadequately documented, and unchecked by even rudimentary notions of objectivity.

• Source: Lies, Damned Lies and 40,000 Smoking-Related Deaths

Molimard, Robert

Professor emeritus of physiology and coordinator of the DIU of Tabacologie to the Faculty of Medicine Paris-South.

Founder of the first French learned society on tobacco and nicotine dependence, inventor of the word "tabacologie." Author of La Fume and the Small handbook of Défume, Paris, France.

- Science can only progress if we learn from its mistakes. What is truly diabolical is keeping our eyes tightly shut and manufacturing the results to best serve our own interests and obsessions!

• Source: Beliefs, Manipulation and Lies in the Tobacco Issue

The following explanation from Professor Molimard (translated freely from its original French version) describes how the modern day Tobacco Control movement is actually hurting smokers:

- And they lay it on thick, accusing them – through passive smoking – to be the murderers of their neighbours or their children: this is a contemptible manipulation devised by the pharmaceutical companies at the same time as the launch of Champix©. I analyzed the machination behind it in an article published in a prominent and daring scientific journal [2], that obviously no media picked up.

- The omnipresence of the cigarette in a smoker's life results in making smoking part of the smoker's personal identity. Attacking this identity triggers the smoker's defensive mechanism and causes smokers to resort to an entrenched type of smoking. Is it then surprising that ever since prohibition has spread in Europe,

• smoking prevalence has increased from 27 to 29% in Ireland,
• Italy now has 2 million more smokers,
• the youth rediscovers tobacco (and marijuana),
• The number of students for the Diplôme de Tabacologie that I was organizing again this year in Paris decreased by two thirds,
• The tabacologie consultations are emptying out,
• The sales of so-called cessation medications are sharply declining

• Source: Interview du Professeur Molimard (2ème partie)
• Note: English translation of his published analysis as he refers to it in the above quote can be read at The European Report ‘‘Lifting the SmokeScreen’’ Epidemiological study or manipulation?

Nilsson, Robert

Professor of Molecular Toxicology, Stockholm University, Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Toxicology. Senior Toxicologist, Swedish National Chemicals Inspectorate.

Professor Robert Nilsson has written several highly critical articles about the anti-smoking industry claims that passive smoking causes heart disease and lung cancer. He calls the risk of heart disease unsupported and highly hypothetical - and the risk of lung cancer negligible.

- The one-sided preoccupation with ETS as a causative factor of lung cancer in nonsmokers may seriously hinder the elucidation of the multifactorial etiology of these tumors.

In the book What Risk? professor Nilsson puts childrens risk of passive smoking in this perspective:

- Looked at another way, a child’s intake of benzo[a]pyrene during 10 hours from ETS is estimated to be about 250 times less than the amount ingested from eating one grilled sausage.

Professor Nilsson also refers to the smoking bans as "extremist legislation."

• Source: Chemical Education Today, Book & Media Reviews

• Source: Environmental tobacco smoke revisited: the reliability of the data used for risk assessment

Phillips, Carl V.

PhD Public Policy, Master of Public Policy, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research. Has held teaching positions at Harvard University, University of Minnesota, University of Texas, and the University of Alberta. Professional consultant on health policies and economics.

- If research on smoking cessation was a science, rather than being a marketing and political activity, the overwhelming evidence that NRT [Nicotine Replacement Therapy] does not work would have led to the rejection of a hypothesis.

• Source: Unhealthful News 213 - More on "addiction", and understanding why NRT does not work

Ropohl, Günter

Prof. Günter Ropohl studied both mechanical engineering and philosophy at Stuttgart Universität, obtaining his PhD (Dr -Ing) in 1970. In 1978 Prof. Ropohl wrote his Habilitation thesis in philosophy and sociology at Karlsruhe Universität where in 1979 he became Professor. In 1981 Prof. Ropohl became Professor for general technology and philosophy of technology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he lectured until 2004.

Prof. Ropohl is is an honorary member of the German Engineering Association (VDI) and has published more than 210 articles and 30 books. (10 as author and 20 as editor or co-editor). Prof. Ropohl has also written a number of critical articles in NovoArgumente about passive smoking, smoking bans and the WHO. Professor Ropohl stresses that he has not worked for the tobacco industry, and describes modern restrictions on smoking and smokers as:

- Angestachelt von pseudowissenschaftlichen Vorurteilen. (Motivated by pseudo-scientific prejudices.)

• Source: "Passivrauchen" als statistisches Konstrukt

Shaw, Michael D.

Environmental scientist, California.

- Science, at its best, should never have an agenda, and should aid the quest for truth. In the days before big media and big research grants, bizarre claims could be subjected to the harsh light of objective science. Nowadays, though, it is sometimes the alleged "science" that promotes the bizarre claims.

• Source: Second Hand Smoke: What Does Science Tell Us?

Siegel, Michael

Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University has a long and renowned history of promoting anti-tobacco and anti-smoking research and ideology in close conjunction with Stanton Glantz and Americans for Nonsmokers Rights. However, he is even more notable for his decision to split from the extremist mainstream of the Tobacco Control Industry in the early 2000s, and is now best known for his tobaccoanalysis blog where he regularly takes apart shoddy research presented in support of extremist antismoking positions. His scientific rigor has proved to be quite an embarrassment to his former colleagues and they have booted him off the GlobaLink listserv and out of their inner circle in recent years.

- Frankly, at this point, I am not so surprised that anti-tobacco advocates would have a pre-determined agenda that is devoid of an evidence base. The only surprise is that these advocates would readily admit that the purpose of research is to provide a rationale for this pre-determined agenda, rather than to figure out whether the policy works or not.

• Source: Anti-Smoking Researchers Promote Bias in Tobacco Control Research: What's Happening to the Integrity of Tobacco Control Science?

In light of his continued support of indoor workplace smoking bans, regardless of effective ventilation techniques and the voluntary exposure of workers, Siegel is also referenced on our anti-tobacco Advocates page.

Simpson, Terry

Scientist, author, surgeon, Phoenix, Arizona.

- The Surgeon General was incorrect. Second hand smoke may be an irritant and an annoyance, but it’s not a cause of death.

• Source: The Myth of Second Hand Smoke

Snel, Jan

Psycho-physiologist. Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, NL.

• Smoking is a pleasure with beneficial effects on mood and cognition.
  
• Bans on smoking impose profound psychological and social burdens on smokers who are labelled deviant, which impairs mental health.
  
• Enforced prohibition of smoking represents an ineffective, counterproductive and moralizing dead end.
  
• The concerns about the impact of smoking bans on mental health, well-being and quality of life have been given hardly any consideration.
  
• To deprive people from pleasure, and by that harm their mental health, is morally reprehensible.

• Source: Smoking bans and mental health

Stadler, Beda

Beda Stadler is professor of immunology and Director of the Institute of Immunology at the University of Bern. Prof. Stadler obtained his Doctorate phil. nat. (PhD in molecular biology) in 1979 at the Natural Sciences Faculty, University of Bern, Switzerland, wrote his Habilitation thesis in 1986 at Medical Faculty, University of Bern, Switzerland, became Professor of immunology in 1991 and Ordinary Professor of immunology in 2001.

Prof. Stadler's research in the field of allergology and auto-immunity resulted in numerous publications in renowned scientific journals, such as Nature. Prof. Stadler is also well known for voicing earthy common sense in newspapers and television, and has stated plainly:

- Passivrauchen war nie tödlich. (Passive smoking has never been deadly.)

• Source: Beda Stadler: Passivrauchen war nie tödlich