Phil Williams comments on the latest false representation of the British government on the statistical junk science it has embraced to justify its smoking bans. Although the studies’ results are substantially and technically "statistically insignificant," and utterly meaningless in real terms, when a number are piled together by meta-analysis, le voilà, they become "significant" bases for real-world tyranny.
Incompetence? Or outright criminal, fraudulent behaviour? Both, no doubt.
In fact, first of all it must be said that any honest scientist considers meta-analysis of multifactorial epidemiological studies the epitome of trash because it sums and totals the colossal errors inherent in the base studies themselves.
In the second place, and more fundamentally, all those studies really measure absolutely nothing. As such they are collections and calculations of erroneous reasonings and baseless figures, only this, and nothing more. Readers of our science archives are aware of the fatal logical flaws on which all passive smoking studies are based. (Also note today’s Multimedia posting on the fabricated risks of passive smoking.)
In the third place this situation becomes ever more colossally obtuse and ever more terrible over time. Criminally idiotic “public health” is hopelessly addicted to fallacious reasoning. Thus the things they do and the way they think are impossible of sane comprehension and impervious to reasonable correction.
It’s a bit like this. Imagine a severely dysfunctional, retarded individual (representing a study on vague memory recalls of exposure to ETS) with a condition that is so severe (the methodology used) that the individual has to be institutionalized as he represents a danger to himself (science) and others (liberties.) His retardation is so great as to be irreparable (no rectification of the studies is possible).
Now imagine that there are 75 such dysfunctionally retarded individuals (all the base studies on passive smoking and lung cancer, for example – but is could be heart disease as well) in the institution (the Ministry of Health.) Keep in mind that these retarded individuals have cousins – secondary studies and papers – so the entire group amounts to about 150.
At that point the institution claims that some collective conference (meta-analysis) of said irreparably defective individuals amounts to something that has significant power (statistical significance) and superior intelligence (because it “demonstrates” causality.) In other words, the statement is that the aggregation of some 37 idiots selected out of 150 makes a genius!
If such a statement was made about actual, mentally deficient persons, you would conclude that the institution – that is, the Ministry of Health – was an engine of incompetence, and a grave menace, wouldn’t you?
Well, prepare yourself: Phil Williams tells of essentially just such a collective conference of the hopelessly barmy, and of their barmy conclusions, and of the worst: the folks in British government are saying they agree!
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