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Commentary
Use and abuse of statistics in tobacco industry-funded research on standardised packaging
  1. Anthony A Laverty1,
  2. Pascal Diethelm2,
  3. Nicholas S Hopkinson3,
  4. Hilary C Watt1,
  5. Martin McKee4
  1. 1Department of Primary Care & Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK
  2. 2OxyRomandie, Geneva, Switzerland
  3. 3NIHR Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit at Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College, London, UK
  4. 4London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Anthony A Laverty, Department of Primary Care & Public Health, Imperial College London, Room 322, Reynolds Building, St Dunstan's Road, London W6 8RP, UK; a.laverty{at}imperial.ac.uk

Abstract

In this commentary we consider the validity of tobacco industry-funded research on the effects of standardised packaging in Australia. As the first country to introduce standardised packs, Australia is closely watched, and Philip Morris International has recently funded two studies into the impact of the measure on smoking prevalence. Both of these papers are flawed in conception as well as design but have nonetheless been widely publicised as cautionary tales against standardised pack legislation. Specifically, we focus on the low statistical significance of the analytical methods used and the assumption that standardised packaging should have an immediate large impact on smoking prevalence.

  • Tobacco industry
  • public policy
  • packaging and labelling

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-052051

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    Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/