Tuesday 18 March 2014

Siegel's despair

Dr Siegel has had enough...

The rest of the story is that this is complete garbage.

It is truly depressing to me to watch this - day in and day out.

When the tobacco industry decided - sometime back around 2000 or so - to stop monitoring tobacco control science and to just let us say anything we wanted to - I thought they had made a poor decision. But in retrospect, I think it may have been brilliant. They apparently knew that before long, without the restraints of having to answer to Big Tobacco's public questioning, our science would deteriorate and we would just start saying anything we wanted to. Unrestrained, the tobacco control movement's scientific rigor would fall to such a low level that we would end up discrediting ourselves and undermining our own credibility.

Well, we're there. We're officially there.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this later. But for now, I'm just too damn depressed.

Read his post to find out what has irked him.



8 comments:

Mac the Knife said...

"... I'm just too damn depressed"

I'm not, I'm in transports of delight. We have scarlet fever back now, and with TB prevalence perhaps about to hit the fan, perhaps someone may notice that 'Public Health' have been pissing around with figurative mice in the wainscoting while the country was being charged by figurative rhinoceri...

proglodyte said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
proglodyte said...

It's ironic - something that has been denormalised has now become part of the furniture.

nisakiman said...

As a couple of the commenters on his blog pointed out, Dr Siegel was part of the problem that now visits itself upon us.

I believe him to be an honest and principled man, but he went along with the zeitgeist in its infancy, and although he may now recoil in horror at the monster he helped create, help to create it he did. And now it's out of control, and he has no power to restrain it.

He should have taken heed of history. This scenario (in various forms) has played out many times, and never with beneficial consequences. The urge to control others is usually strongest in those least deserving of that power. And they always abuse the power they accrue.

Anonymous said...

He is not the only depressed is he, does he think us smokers are having great fun with all this?
I watched someone tonight almost begging for blood donors, well I have the type they would like more of, shame I am a smoker isn't it. not so long ago we had those "dirty smokers blood" adverts so that rules me and many others out then. Public health cannot insult us without a consequence. They must have done more harm for smokers wanting to give their "dirty blood" or blackened organs. Well done to public health I and many other do not want to play your hateful little games. Please excuse any errors.

David goerlitz said...

I don't want to say I told you so......but I told you so.. Too little too late.
Science has become....not fda approved, not enough studies, may be, could be, possibly be, speculates, suspicions, unproven, risk of, for the children, looks as though, claims to be, nicotine laced, and a plethora of other bullshit soundbites that sheep will listen to and follow. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ANYONE?

Jonathan Bagley said...

Like anon, I won't give blood and I ripped up my donor card after carrying it around for 30 years.

nisakiman said...

Well Dr Siegel is taking a comprehensive pasting in the comments below his post, many of them very articulate and damning. I wonder if, on reading them, he will see the depth of his hypocrisy or if he will dismiss them as being the rantings of disgruntled smokers?

Given that his blogs written since that post make no mention of the reactions, I suspect the latter. Either that or he hasn't bothered to read them. Whatever, it just shows that (to rather mix my metaphors) despite the crocodile tears, the leopard doesn't change his spots.