MyShout
If the Scots gave up eating deep-fried Mars bars I'd believe in their new found health, says Stephen Oliver
If my head's in the oven and my arse is in the fridge,
on average I'm comfortable. Or put another way, "Crash helmets cause head injuries". Do you see where I'm going with this? In the last 30 years the number of paralysed ex-motorcyclists has increased markedly. Why? Simple. In the old days before crash helmets became compulsory, bikers would die from a fractured skull, so it didn't matter that they'd broken their neck as well. Now more survive, but are injured - hence
the headline.
I can go on about the use and abuse of statistics. You might expect some dodgy numbers from politicians, but scientists are up there with the best of them when it comes to making the numbers fit the story.
It's tempting to think that our learned colleagues from research institutes, universities, hospitals and other centres of scientific excellence would be above the lure of base self interest, but no. Scientists widely rely upon sponsorship for their daily bread. In universities, finding correlations, however deep you have to dig, widely counts as "results". And an exciting or unexpected result gets you published and on the international conference circuit - as long as it's not critical of whichever organisation is paying your salary.
We've seen a prime example of this phenomenon on the news this week with the "detailed study" of the Scottish smoking ban and its impact on public health. The researchers, who are funded by a government anti-smoking organisation, claim a 17% drop in heart attack admissions and that exposure to second-hand smoke is down 40%.
Incredibly, the press release goes on to say that the new law has "been effective in protecting non-smokers". Intuitively, this must be right, as long as Scotland's legions of smokers aren't now puffing away at home in front of the kids instead.
But to ascribe reductions in heart attacks so quickly and so extensively to the ban is plainly misleading.
For a start it was a study of only nine hospitals,
a fraction of the total. Secondly, public health effects can rarely be linked solely to one factor, especially heart disease, which has many contributory causes, including most obviously diet.
If the Scots had not only stopped smoking but had also given up their predilection for eating deep-fried Mars bars and taken up marathon running at the
same time, well, then I might believe the figures.
As it is, the "success story" owes more to the Scottish Government's political need to show urgent progress and the health lobby's complicity by prostituting their scientific rigour.
Fact is, fundamental changes to the health of a nation takes years - if not decades - to bring about and it is deeply cynical to suggest that the ban has already worked and to quote specific reductions in heart attacks. For a start, 95% of second-hand smoking exposure is in the home where there is no ban and,
if anything, levels of smoke may well have risen.
Why can't governments and health lobbyists treat us like sensible people and simply say: "We think it's working but it'll be years before we know for sure"? We can then decide whether we trust their judgement without being conned by bad science. After all, 33% of people think politicians are lying toads. I know that for a fact - I asked three friends and one agreed.
Stephen Oliver is managing director of Marston's Pub Company
