Tuesday 22 September 2009

More fake statistics ...

From the BBC:

Bans on smoking in public places have had a bigger impact on preventing heart attacks than ever expected, data shows.
Smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by up to a third, two studies report...

Earlier this month it was announced that heart attack rates fell by about 10% in England in the year after the ban on smoking in public places was introduced in July 2007 - which is more than originally anticipated. But the latest work, based on the results of numerous different studies collectively involving millions of people, indicated that smoking bans have reduced heart attack rates by as much as 26% per year.


Here we go again. Note how "by up to a third" has become "by as much as 26%" further into the article?

Even ASH (who had supposedly carried out the research in England) have admitted that there was no evidence to support the "about 10%" claim, but presumably they are gambling on the public being dumb enough to just read the headlines and fall for the 10% story, and if they fall for that. no doubt a few will fall for 26% or 30%. I suppose that's how propaganda works, it's the constant drip-drip as much as anything.

Today's bonus round: take a look at the numbers behind this claim in the Metro Stop-smoking scheme 'saved 70,000' which is almost undoubtedly untrue as well, but those poor dears have to try and make sure that they aren't the first thing the next government axes.

3 comments:

Letters From A Tory said...

I expect many people will lap up this new story, even though the previous figures don't seem to hold up to much scrutiny.

That said, I think this latest study was a meta-analysis of 11 other studies - care to do some more digging to get the fine details?!

Rational Anarchist said...

the whole 1/3 vs 26% sounds to me like someone got confused...

Suppose that previously we would have expected 100 people to die in a given span of time from smoking-related heart attacks and that now it's 74 people, then that's a reduction of 26%, but looking at the final number you see 26 people survived, 74 died, so that's over a third saved...

Except that it's not.

Unknown said...

It's weird that people are paying more attention to reduced heart attacks as credited to the law rather than health resources that might have more truthful evidence.