Author Archives: Carl V Phillips

by Carl V Phillips

Readers of this blog should check out a newly published short booklet that includes a cartoon by Marewa Glover and an essay by me (plus a brief introduction) on the theme in the title of this post. It speaks for itself and is shorter than many of the posts here, so I will just suggest you go read it.

One of my favorite observations to teach is, “the quality of an answer is highly dependent on what question is being asked” (most often in the context of what is the “best” research method — it depends on the question!). In this essay, I give it the companion observation, “asking the wrong question usually results in the wrong answer.”

by Carl V Phillips

Four and a half years in the making, this series is coming to an end (until I think of something else to add). Not with this post, but the next entry in the series, which will be a paper by Marewa Glover and me that I consider the definitive answer — collection of answers, that is — to the question. Well, again, until I think of something else to add.

For my new readers and those who want a review, this series starts and is indexed here. You will find, if you follow my writings closely or after reading the final entry, that some of my thinking has evolved. But it has not changed much. I still endorse almost everything that appears in the first four parts. Continue reading →

by Carl V Phillips

I suspect none of this is anything that my regular readers need to have explained. But I have been thin in my postings and an old friend asked for a clarification on this, so I thought I would do it. I imagined a Twitter thread and realized it is way too much for that. Also, I realized that perhaps I could organize the various bits in a way that helps clarify.

First, are the overarching first-line reasons why any policies that intentionally cripple vaping are harmful:

1. Interesting flavors are an enticement for people who smoke to switch to vaping and stay switched. We have overwhelming evidence that most switchers prefer interesting flavors. We have very solid evidence that many switchers would not have switched if interesting flavors did not exist, and good reason to believe that many would switch back if those flavors ceased to exist. Continue reading →

by Carl V Phillips

I was asked by Clive Bates to expand upon his analysis of this paper (open access link): “Evidence that an intervention weakens the relationship between adolescent electronic cigarette use and tobacco smoking: a 24-month prospective study”, which is “by” Mark Conner, Sarah Grogan, Ruth Simms-Ellis, Keira Flett, Bianca Sykes-Muskett, Lisa Cowap, Rebecca Lawton, Christopher Armitage, David Meads, Laetitia Schmitt, Carole Torgerson, Robert West, andKamran Siddiqi, Tobacco Control, 2019. (Scare quotes on by because you know when there are 15 authors, fewer than half of them even read it, let alone wrote it.)

It is yet another “vaping is a gateway to smoking in teenagers” study. Yet another one which provides no evidence that there is a gateway effect. It is yet another thought-free piece of public health garbage in which there is no hint of scientific thinking. Like most such, it was painful to read. There were only a couple of interesting bits. But it is an opportunity to offer some general lessons. Continue reading →

by Carl V Phillips

[Oops, I forget to click “publish” on Sunday. So here it is on Monday. I am keeping the title as is though. :-)] I was thinking about this topic because I just finished writing a paper in which it comes up, and also I stumbled across a paper from a couple of years ago, by my old friend Miguel Hernán, that goes into depth about some aspects of it (open access link; a wonderful and generally understandable, though slightly technical, presentation). The issue is how far you can go in agglomerating heterogeneous entities (people, behavior, conditions, etc.) into a single category in an analysis and still have meaningful results. Continue reading →

by Carl V Phillips

There are quite a few takes out there comparing anti-THR activists to antivaxxers. These make for stinging attacks, like comparing someone’s position to that of the Nazis. Most of the loudest anti-THR voices despise antivaxxers, so it is fun to make the comparison. However, despite being a cute barb, comparing anti-THR to anti-vaxx is a terrible analogy. Continue reading →