We’ve reached that point in society where it doesn’t matter what science says, we’re going to choose to listen to and endorse whatever information best suits our own personal views. I believe it’s called “confirmation bias.” According to Wikipedia:
Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way.
For example, if you have a passionate hate for e-cigarettes and the ilk who indulge in them, you would probably enjoy the following articles here on BroBible:
- This Study Says That These Three E-Cigarette Flavors Are Toxic In High Doses
- Bros, Science Says That E-Cigs Are Just As Terrible For You As Cigarettes, So Be Sure To Tell Your Friend Chad
- Hey E-Cig Smokers, Are You Enjoying Those Ridiculously High Levels Of Cancer Causing Formaldehyde?
After reading any of those three you can go spout off to your friends about how e-cigarettes are bad for you and let them know they’re all going straight to hell once they die. But what if you DO like vaping and/or smoking e-cigarettes? You need some stupid scientific study that’ll only be contradicted by another stupid scientific study a few weeks down the road to back up your life choices to your anyone and everyone!
Well fear not, because here’s yet ANOTHER goddamn study done by Public Health England that says e-cigarettes are less damaging to health than smoking tobacco. According to The Guardian,
Vaping is safer than smoking and could lead to the demise of the traditional cigarette, Public Health England (PHE) has said in the first official recognition that e-cigarettes are less damaging to health than smoking tobacco.
The health body concluded that, on “the best estimate so far”, e-cigarettes are about 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes and could one day be dispensed as a licensed medicine in an alternative to anti-smoking products such as patches.
While stressing that e-cigarettes are not free from risk, PHE now believes that e-cigarettes “have the potential to make a significant contribution to the endgame for tobacco”.
The message was backed by the government’s chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, who nevertheless cautioned that “there continues to be a lack of evidence on the long-term use of e-cigarettes”. She said they should only be used as a means to help smokers quit.
“I want to see these products coming to the market as licensed medicines. This would provide assurance on the safety, quality and efficacy to consumers who want to use these products as quitting aids, especially in relation to the flavourings used, which is where we know least about any inhalation risks.”
So there hasn’t yet been a study on the long-term affects of e-cigarettes, but in the short term it looks like they can, at the very least, help tobacco smokers quit. As of right now no e-cigarette products carry a medicinal license as do other nicotine-replacement products, and it potentially might not make a difference if they did – the public still largely thinks that e-cigs are harmful to your health.
Worryingly for many of those behind the policy change, increasing numbers of people – up to 22%, compared with 8% two years ago – think e-cigarettes are equally or more harmful than tobacco. This is leading some smokers to avoid switching, studies have suggested.
Tobacco reduction campaigners say the public needs to be educated to recognise that although e-cigarettes, like tobacco cigarettes, contain addictive nicotine, they do not contain more dangerous chemicals such as tar and arsenic.
…“The problem is people increasingly think they are at least as harmful and this may be keeping millions of smokers from quitting. Local stop-smoking services should look to support e-cigarette users in their journey to quitting completely.”(via)
Stay tuned for next week when ANOTHER study gets published about how e-cigarettes give you herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea and a raging case of facial shingles if you ever so much as look at one.
Tl;dr: everything will kill you, so you may as well go ahead and do what you want anyway.
[H/T The Guardian]