User talk:Dessources

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The scientific debate will never be closed - ever! Everything is and IMO should be debatable. People will debate the science of this forever. I could debate that the earth is an orange, the sun is a banana, and the moon is a pineapple. My opinion may be wacky and crazy, but I still can debate it. No debate on an issue is ever closed.

Dessources 12:07, 23 November 2006 (UTC) In the absolute, you are right. But in that case, the sentence should be added to all wikipedia entries which make some kind of scientific statement about the state of things. For example, under "Earth" there should be a mention that it is still debated whether the earth is round, as there are indeed people (e.g. the members of the Flat Earth Society) who deny this fact. Under "Appolo 7", there should be an mention that the question as to whether man set foot on the moon is still debated, as there are people who truly believe that the Appolo 7 mission was an American hoax, made by manipulation of televised images. Concerning the link between the 9/11 attacks and Al-Qaeda, one could indeed add a sentence saying that this link is still debated, as this is challenged by proponents of various conspiracy theories. And so on, and so forth, ad nauseum... This would lead to a quite tedious and boring repetition of virtually the same "debate is not closed" statement in thousands of entries. I am not sure Wikipedia users would appreciate it.

This shows that saying that the debate is not closed, in the absolute sense you mean (indicated by the use of the word "never"), even if this is completely right, carries strictly no information, since we are saying something which is obvious and goes without saying, which is virtually tautological. Therefore, when we take the pain of specifically mentioning that the debate is not closed, we mean something else, something very different, something that is interpreted as a statement that carries some information. This means that the scientific issue, in the current state of knowledge, still has unbiased arguments on both sides. It means that even if one side may have more arguments or more convincing ones than the other, there are still valid arguments that plead for the other point of view.

The passive smoking question, as a scientific argument, no longer fulfills this criterion. The scientific debate concerning whether passive smoking is harmful to human health is now considered as closed by all the independent health experts and the public health authorities of the world. There is not a single dissenting voice. E.g. USA vs. Philip Morris et al. Final Opinion, p. 1229: "Since the 1986 Surgeon General's Report, every major scientific review and assessment of the science on passive smoking and its health effects has independently and consistently concluded that passive smoking causes disease and other adverse health effects in adults and children." Of course, people may still disagree about some specific aspects, such as whether breast cancer should be included or not in the list of known risks. But there is not a single scientist who is not grossly biased who would claim that passive smoking is harmless. The only people to make such claims are either closely linked to the tobacco industry, or have a hidden agenda, such as libertarians whose aim is to protect the "freedom" to smoke at all cost.

I do not advocate that the existence of denial of the toxicity of passive smoking should be ignored or suppressed. My proposal is that it should be treated in the same way as, for example, the Consipray Theories in the "September 11, 2001 attacks" wikipedia entry. Actually, the "Passive smoking" entry comes close to such a treatment.Dessources 12:07, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Filters & passive smoking

Thanks for your message. I appreciate what you're saying about the dangers of passive smoke being dependent on temperature - but they aren't solely dependent on it. The paper I linked from the talk page make it quite clear that, while the filters are a tobacco-company con (and I agree the practical benefit they provide is extremely limited), it is nonetheless the case that they reduce inhaled toxins. In brief, the filter is cellulose acetate, and its fibres collect tar particles during inhalation (See: Kozlowski et al. Maximum yields might improve public health--if filter vents were banned: a lesson from the history of vented filters. Tob Control. 2006 Jun;15(3):262-6. PMID 16728759). Some filters also include activated charcoal, which remove gas phase smoke constituents. In addition, the vents serve to reduce the temperature of the smoke-producing part of the cigarette - which links in to what you were saying about the different chemical composition of the smoke at lower temperatures. Please, take the time to read the paper I've linked to - you are not correct to say that filters don't provide a benefit, and it does the article no favours to remove information from it. Nmg20 21:48, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Nmg20, you for your explanation. I read the paper by Kozlowski et al. with great interest. It appears to me that their observations and conclusions relate only very remotely, if at all, to the results contained in the paper by Schick and Glantz (See: Schick S, Glantz S. "Philip Morris toxicological experiments with fresh sidestream smoke: more toxic than mainstream smoke." Tob Control. 2005 14(6):396-404. PMID 16319363). The paper by Kozlowski et al. looks at the effect of vents on filter cigarettes. They recommend that vents be banned, and, at the same time, that maximum tar, nicotine and CO yields be be reduced, so as to lower the desirability of cigarettes. Very interesting, but quite far from a comparison of sidestream smoke and mainstream smoke, which is the purpose of the paper by Schick and Glantz.

The biological experiments described in the Schick and Glantz paper had as their goal to compare sidestream smoke with mainstream smoke. For that purpose, the comparison was made between strictly identical quantities of smoke of each type. The authors concluded that the research had shown that "sidestream condensate is 2–6 times more tumourigenic per gram than mainstream condensate. By inhalation, whole fresh sidestream smoke is 2–6 times more toxic per gram TPM than mainstream smoke, depending on the end point." The experiments used unfiltered cigarettes. So the result had nothing to do with filter. This is why the comment about the filter as a possible explanation of the result is inappropriate. Actually, if filtered cigarettes had been used instead, the results might have exhibited a much greater difference, as is stated by Schick and Glantz:

The cigarette used in these studies, the University of Kentucky 2R1 standard reference cigarette, is a high tar, unfiltered cigarette designed to model the cigarettes popular within the 1950s. The advantages of the 2R1 cigarette are that it does not change over time or from market to market. There is evidence that the sidestream smoke from the filtered ‘‘light’’ cigarettes that now constitute the majority of market is significantly more toxic, per gram and per cigarette, than that from ‘‘full-flavor’’ cigarettes similar to the 2R1. Thus, the results of the INBIFO work in the 1980s may underestimate the toxicity of modern sidestream smoke.

Dessources 00:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)