Scientific Evidence Portal
Further Information
Revisiting the Association between Environmental Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Lung Cancer Risk - Adjustment for the Biasing Effect of Misclassification of Smoking Habits | Peter N. Lee, Barbara Forey, John S. Fry
Article Published: 2002
Details:
Type: Meta-Analysis
Published By: Indoor+Built Environment 10:6:2001, 384-398
Further Information The studies on passive smoking are plagued with irrecoverable flaws . One of those flaws is the biasing effects of misclassification of smoking habits.
In this study from 2002, Lee, Forey and Fry could decrease the statistical risk in non-smoking women associated with smoking by the husband from 1.24 to 1.18 simply by using an alternative method for misclassification adjustment, or by using updated data from 47 studies rather than data from the 37 studies used by Hackshaw et al.
“The bias is increased if strong evidence of much higher misclassification rates in Asian women is taken into account and could then explain about half the observed association. Misclassification correction has not previously been attempted for dose-response data. We describe a suggested approach and apply it to data relating risk to amount smoked by the husband.”
To those who know the fundamentals of the junk science on passive smoking studies all this may appear as a useless exercise after all, and indeed it may be. Why splitting the hair on the head of a bald man? All the studies on passive smoking are methodological garbage at the must fundamental level. Tasty dressings on irreparably spoiled foods usually don’t make the foods taste any better, and when they do, they are extremely dangerous because spoiled food may kill you – objectively, not because of “attributions”!