Stanton Glantz has finally had his study on vaping/heart attacks retracted. It is hard to imagine that this his first retraction but given the gutter standards of the field he works in, it may be.
Brad Rodu and others have been calling for the Journal of the American Heart Association to retract this piece of junk for months. The study claimed that vaping increased the risk of heart attack among a group of ex-smokers. Ex-smokers are more likely to have a heart attack than nonsmokers and those who switch to e-cigarettes may be more prone than others for various reasons (eg. they may have been heavier smokers than those who quit cold turkey). Any association could easily be due to residual confounding.
That is an issue with any study of this sort, such as the same authors' study which claimed totally implausible associations between vaping and respirator heart disease.
But there was a much bigger and simpler problem with Glantz and Bhatta's study on heart attacks: many of the heart attacks occurred before the individuals started vaping. In some instances, e-cigarettes were not even on the market at the time.
It is an open and shut case. When this issue was raised, the journal asked the authors to 'conduct the analysis based on when specific respondents started using e‐cigarettes'. They didn't and so...
The editors hereby retract the article from publication in Journal of the American Heart Association.
Glantz's response on his blog is hilariously predictable...
Journal of American Heart Association caves to pressure from e-cig interests
Alas, he doesn't say which people represent 'e-cig interests' nor why it would make any difference if they did. He has bluffed his way through a long career by shouting down critics with the magic words 'Big Tobacco' and 'Big Vape'. He's not going to stop now.
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