The responses illustrate how easily most people, especially the educated ones, fall for scams if they are wrapped into scientific language. That's why there are so many of them, especially from sickness industry since that's where people are the most ready to part with their money.

One little clue to help you recognize a pseudo-scientific scam is when you hear a pronouncement from high up "debate is over" or "science is settled" -- that's a scam. Another clue, especially regarding health pronouncements, is silence about experiments and exclusive focus on parroting statistical correlations on non-randomized samples, or throwing around scary numbers spewed by computer models based on such correlations. One more clue is when someone overdoes it on how solid their "science" is by comparing their scientifically sounding pronouncements to law of gravity.

It says that you should announce your great discovery to the whole world by publishing a paper and becoming famous since causing lung cancer via inhalation of tobacco smoke is still the unattained holy grail of the antismoking "science" that no one has been able to figure out how to achieve. Animals won't cooperate (half the smoking bastards are still alive after all the healthy living non-smoking ones have already gone to the happy hunting grounds), and even in the few randomized human trials that were ever done, the smoking group ended up with fewer lung cancers than the non-smoking/quit group. Check that thread mentioned earlier for literature details and discussions (especially items #1, #2, #3, #6).

Epidemiology by itself isn't a junk science. It crosses into junk science when someone leaps from observed statistical associations on non-randomized samples to wishfully ($$$) declaring causal relations. Such associations are at best a hint that there may be causal relation, but one needs hard science, such as randomized trials or animal/human experiments to find out what kind of links (e.g. causal or protective/therapeutic) connect those correlated variables.

That's how it is done in normal science, you use statistical hint to make hypothesis that is followed up with hard science. But antismoking "science" is stuck on the same hint since 1950.

And it is not for lack of trying hard science. There were thousands of experiments done since then. The problem was that they all went the "wrong" way -- the smoking animals live longer, perform better on cognitive tasks, get cancers less often, etc. What can poor scientific mercenaries do, when their bosses want the opposite result, but stick with what works, parrot the statistical hints disguised as "science." This was so unusual pattern that already in 1958, the father of modern statistical methods, famous British mathematician R. A. Fisher noticed it and wrote (pdf; this article also contains a very readable exposition of the sample randomization topic):

"Most of us thought at the time, on hearing the nature of evidence, which I hope to make clear a little later, that a good prima facie case had been made for further investigation. But the time has passed, and although further investigation, in a sense, has taken place, it has consisted largely of the repetition of observations of the same kind as those which Hill and his colleagues called attention to several years ago. I read a recent article to the effect that nineteen different investigations in different parts of the world had all concurred in confirming Dr. Hill's findings. I think they had concurred, but I think they were mere repetitions of evidence of the same kind..."

Yet, the antismoking "science" still rests its case squarely on the same kind of soft/junk science that Fisher objected to over half a century ago.

In that sense, death is pain and suffering inhibitor too, including AIDS, except you don't get to enjoy the fruits. But here we talking about medicinal substances which can block the damaging cytokines while leaving you alive.

Not really. The association between tobacco smoking and lung cancer is, like the above link to rheumatoid arthritis, only statistical association on non-randomized samples, hence it only shows that tobacco smoking and lung cancer are in the same web of causes and effects, but not what the nature of those links is. For that you need hard science. As with the arthritis, the hard science (animal experiments, randomized trials), shows exactly the opposite -- tobacco smoke is protective against lung cancer.

For example, when dogs are exposed to high dose radon (where nearly animals half get lung cancer), 7 times fewer smoking dogs get lung cancer than non-smoking dogs. Similar results, of which you will never hear from your doctor or the news media, were found in numerous other animal experiments under variety of co-exposures to chemical carcinogens and industrial toxins. Such experiments when carried to the full lifespan of animals, also show that smoking animals live 20% longer, while remaining thinner and sharper into the old age.

Besides the above anti-inflammatory effects, some components of tobacco smoke nearly double the levels of the three primary internal antioxidants and detox enzymes (glutathione, catalase and SOD). The resulting doubled detox and protection rates lead to self-medication confounding (which is never accounted for) in the statistical associations on non-randomized samples. For reference to the above statements, as well as an in depth followup discussion, see this post in a nootropic & life-extension forum longecity.

Tobacco smoke has a broad, multilevel anti-inflammatory effects, from inflammatory controls in vagus center, then via the upregulation of corticosteroids, down to stimulation of anti-inflammatory cellular alpha-7 receptors. This includes inhibition of the same inflammatory cytokines (IL-1beta, IL-18) as done by VX-765.

Interestingly, nicotine only partially accounts for these anti-inflammatory effects, while some unknown components of the full tobacco smoke yield additional protection. For example in a related RA experiment to the one at the link, where mice with induced RA were divided into tobacco smoke, nicotine and untreated controls, the tobacco smoke group had the least damage to the cartilage and the longest delay of the onset of the disease, the controls had the most damage and the earliest onset, while nicotine group fell in between.

Of course, the antismoking junk science (one manifestation of the big the pharma's war on medicinal plants) strongly urges RA patients to immediately quit smoking since on non-randomized samples there RA is positively associated with tobacco smoking. What the hard science implies, such as the above and other experiments on anti-inflammatory effects of tobacco smoke, is that this positive statistical association at the level of epidemiology is due to self-medication. Taking into account that type of confounding is a taboo in the present antismoking "science."

Interestingly, the ancient medicinal plant, tobacco, is also caspase inhibitor, just like the promising drug VX-765 (aka "belnacasan") in that article.

I can hardly wait for the match to start (the first game is this Saturday). I will be getting up at 4:30AM EST for the duration of the match, to watch the games live on the web. Although I play nowadays only against computers, I used to play for college team (at Brown) and had reached an expert rating (2100 USCF rating), before quitting human play. As a kid back in the old country (ex-Yugoslavia), my brother and I who shared one bedroom, after the lights out would play blindfolded chess games in the dark, each with the chessboard in his mind eye. He never stopped active competition and became a chess master eventually (that's one rank above me). Once you are bitten by the chess bug, it stays with you for life.

I thin this one is more pertinent for the Salon article.

Physics is not immune to parasitic and mercenary research phenomena either, especially in more exotic areas with great funding potential, such as quantum computing & crypto where exaggerations and self-puffery are common. One might say the whole field is of that kind, since their whole theorizing (which is all they got) rests on the speculative aspects of quantum measurement theory, the foundations of which are still awaiting unambiguous experimental demonstration (such as the "loophoole free" violations of Bell inequalities), for over half century already. Should the experimental failure to confirm the fundamental conjectures persist, the whole field will be recognized as fancily relabeled analog computing (such as D-Wave system).

Yes, I have seen that. The wave aspects of QM are not mysterious since some fluids can satisfy similar differential equations (there was a fluid dynamics formulation of QM in 1920s, Madelung's QM).

The strange predictions of non-local behaviors arise only from the QM Measurement Theory (QM-MT; it dates to 1920s Dirac, Heisenberg, von Neumann) which includes postulate about non-local state collapse of composite system.

The Quantum Electrodynamics has its own, newer and rigorously derived measurement theory (QED-MT) developed by Glauber in 1965 which doesn't postulate such remote field collapse, but only non-controversial local collapse, while deriving from QED dynamical equations the behavior of the composite system measurement. That theory doesn't predict non-local behaviors since all dynamics is described via local differential equations, which in Heisenberg picture look just like Maxwell equations, except that operators (matrices) not scalars are field variables. The Quantum Optics is based on QED-MT since it agrees better with what they observe. See this post and discussion explaining the difference between the QM-MT and QED-MT.

This is not the non-local collapse which some QM physicists (mystical school of thought) believe in. Everything in this experiment is local, the two superposed wave components which collapse into one are fully overlapped. Hence it is no more mysterious than your radio antenna collapsing superposed waves of thousands of radio stations striking it, into one component, that of a station you tuned in.

The real controversy is about existence of non-local collapse i.e. when two components and detectors are "far apart" (at space like distance), so that detection by detector D1 (supposedly) instantly collapses the remote field component causing the remote detector D2 to fail to detect it. Most recent experiment claiming to demonstrate such phenomenon with photon on a beam splitter actually cheated (see discussion here). In that claim they basically tweaked the timings on two coincidence circuits well out of manufacturer's specs so that they could never trigger D1 and D2 simultaneously.

Non-local collapse, which was never demonstrated empirically, does not follow from the Quantum Field Theory (discussion here) but is merely a hypothesis in the QM "measurement theory", which is the speculative, soft and fuzzy, part of the theory that has been debated among physicists, philosophers and mystics for nearly a century without getting anywhere so far.

It appears that ideology and political correctness have taken over the debate, here and elsewhere. This should be a matter of research not emotions. For example it is known that women in heavily male dominated professions, such as math, physics, engineering, programming, hacking,... have more problems conceiving and have more miscarriages. This is due to their hormonal balance which is shifted toward male side. Generally, women who have problems with miscarriages are advised during pregnancy to take it easy, avoid stress (physical and psychological) and in severe cases they can get a medical leave from work for much of the pregnancy. Of course, driving in rush hour can be quite stressful. Most prescription medications have warnings advising against use by pregnant women and infants or children. Similarly pregnant women or those trying to conceive are advised to stop smoking since tobacco smoke upregulates corticosteroids (including stress hormones) and testosterone which suppresses estrogen release. In earlier times they would also be advised to stop riding horses. Even today, pregnant women are instinctively helped by passers by in the street with carrying heavier objects, doing something hazardous or requiring physical exertions.

Hence, the gist of the cleric's comment may not be all that far fetched. In any case emotional attacks are certainly not a productive technique for resolving scientific questions and providing the best scientific advice for the women seeking to conceive and carry the pregnancy through with the lowest risks to themselves and their infants.

Each generation is brainwashed into a different Matrix. 'Founding Fathers' and other great men until 1960s would by today's brainwashing be denounced as racist, sexist homophobes. Kids of tomorrow may denounce you as a hateful old polygamophobe, pedophilophobe, zoophilophobe, necrophilophobe, fetishphobe, toesuckingphobe, kleptophobe.... And then you too will wonder, what the heck is wrong with these kids, while they will insist that you vet your public speaking with younger, more enlightened folks before making a fool out of yourself. Having lived in a communist country as it flipped into its exact opposite, then not long after that it flipped back, you wouldn't believe how quickly and how thoroughly the tune in schools and media changes the dominant mythology to its complete opposite. Once you experience it, you can't take any of them very seriously.

Of course, not all Matrices are created equal. Since each Matrix is a computational process, working out yet another provisional solution to the social harmonization puzzle, you can't know which is a good and which a poor solution until some time time has passed and the latest experimental solution had a chance to get tested under variety of conditions. As the old book taught, you will know them by their fruits.

It may also be that people who take good care of their teeth, which includes regular dental checkups end up with more x-rays and more exposure to variety of viruses or bacteria which may be carcinogenic (such as HPV, cold sores). Another potential factor is carcinogenicity of the tooth care products, such as toothpastes and mouthwashes. These are couple possibilities that one wouldn't expect research by 'cavity industry' to consider.