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COMMENTARY |
Correspondence to:
Mr Peter Lee
P N Lee Statistics and Computing Ltd, 17 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5DA, UK; PeterLee@pnlee.demon.co.uk
Keywords: environmental tobacco smoke; ETS; lung cancer; smoking misclassification; confounding
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
I agree with Yano that scientific integrity should be maintained and researchers be free from pressure from commercial and campaigning interests. I disagree that I have caused any "distortion of scientific findings" or "misrepresentation and misappropriation" of results, serious charges which I will show are unjustified. To clarify the situation I will start with the history preceding the study.
In 1981 Hirayama reported an increased lung cancer risk in non-smoking women married to smokers.1 Following this I demonstrated random misclassification of smokers as non-smokers, coupled with smokers tending to marry smokers, leads to an observed increased risk even when environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has no effect.2,3 The tobacco industry then agreed to support a study in England of this "misclassification bias", using cotinine to validate smoking, which was reported in 1987.4 I also reviewed evidence on misclassification,5 revealing the lack of useful data in Japan, where cultural differences might affect
This article has been cited by other articles:
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E Yano Should a paper with erroneous interpretations based on invalid measurements be published? Tob. Control, December 1, 2005; 14(6): 431 - 432. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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P N Lee Response to E Yano and S Chapman Tob. Control, December 1, 2005; 14(6): 430 - 431. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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S Chapman Research from tobacco industry affiliated authors: need for particular vigilance Tob. Control, August 1, 2005; 14(4): 217 - 219. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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