Almost half

I nearly missed this little story in the Daily Mail...

Tobacco firm gave thousands of pounds worth of hospitality to nine MPs who opposed smoking bill

MPs who received thousands of pounds worth of hospitality from one of the world’s largest tobacco companies opposed a new law banning smoking in cars.

The parliamentary register of members’ interests shows Japan Tobacco International, which produces Benson & Hedges, Silk Cut and Camel cigarettes, spent £23,000 entertaining 20 MPs in the past six months.

Almost half of them voted against a Private Member’s Bill banning smoking in cars carrying children.

"Almost half of them" means "less than half of them" — which doesn't sound like much of a return for sending 20 fat cat MPs to the Chelsea Flower Show (for that is what happened). So how does that compare to the MPs who were not treated to corporate hospitality?

The vote went in favour of the bill by 78 votes to 66. If we exclude the 20 votes of the MPs above, it leaves a vote of 67 to 57. Therefore 46% voted against the bill—or, if you are the Daily Mail, "almost half of them".

Amongst the MPs who accepted tickets to the flower show, 11 voted for and 9 voted against. Therefore 45% of them voted against the bill.

Behold the power of Big Tobacco!

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Nicotine Clegg

Josie Appleton at Spiked has been writing about the Spanish who, like the Greeks, are not taking a "comprehensive" smoking ban lying down. Considering the dire economic conditions in both countries, the decision to spend so much time and money hassling smokers seems puzzling. As Josie says, it reflects the warped priorities of the political class:

The smoking ban springs from elite rather than popular concerns. It’s not because the Spanish elite doesn’t like smoking: prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was recently caught smoking on his presidential jet. 

Yes, it's another political leader who (whisper it) smokes cigarettes. Another do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do politico to line up alongside Barack Obama and Nick Clegg. Reading the Dubai edition of The Sunday Times yesterday morning as I trailed back to the Sussex Riviera alongside the knackered commuters, I found Nick Clegg's fondness for an occasional tab on the front page. Even if this wasn't already common knowledge (which I thought it was), who cares?

The answer, as Newsnight found when they asked people on the street yesterday, is nobody. But the fact that the media and the political class think that anyone would, should or could be interested rather proves Josie's point about the divide between the norms of the elite and the norms of, er, normal folk.

The elite view is that smoking is finished, denormalised and is now the preserve of a tiny handful of addicts. This fantasy can just about be maintained by people working in the upper echelons of public health. Very few, if any, of their colleagues smoke and it is hard to imagine them consorting with smokers in their spare time. In their neverland of conferencing and seminars, their Walter Mitty fantasies are rarely challenged by the clunking fist of reality.

Such an option is not open to journalists and politicians. Smoking remains very common amongst hacks, and even politicians are sometimes forced to encounter the general public from time to time. For them to believe that the world changed on July 1 2007 requires a level of self-delusion that approaches cognitive dissonance. It is as if by willing society to change, it will do so, even as one's own colleagues, friends and leaders continue to puff away.

And if smoking is imagined to be no longer normal, then it must therefore be remarkable to find that someone is a smoker, right?

Wrong. For all the nudging and denormalising, it is civil society that ultimately decides what is normal behaviour. Outside of the public health bubble, the conduct of a quarter of the population cannot sensibly be viewed deviant, unusual or even interesting. And so it isn't. As has been the case for five centuries, all but a handful of people are profoundly indifferent to smoking. They are also—as it happens—supremely uninterested in whoever is leader of the Liberal Democrats. It should hardly be surprising, then, that the "revelation" that the leader of the Liberal Democrats occasionally smokes was greeted with a jaw-breaking yawn.

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The Hindu Times

Hello, hello. It's good to be back.

My source of news these past three weeks has been The Goa Herald and BBC World. Have I missed anything? I heard that tolerant, crime-free Sweden has a racist serial killer on the loose, that the French strikers in Paris have shown considerably more commitment than the French strikers at the World Cup. And my own football club finds itself managerless and second to bottom in the bloody Championship. Can all this possibly be true?

What of India? I'll spare you my banal observations. Suffice to say it's not the place to go if you don't like curry (hello Patrick Basham!), the streets are filled with delicious cows and the smoking ban is more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

More—much more—to be said later today. I have some catching up to do. Meanwhile, via Dick Puddlecote's link tank, I see The Atlantic has an interview with arch-rationalist John Ioannidis (mentioned before on this blog), whose classic paper 'Why most published research findings are false' should be on the national curriculum.

“The studies were biased,” he says. “Sometimes they were overtly biased. Sometimes it was difficult to see the bias, but it was there.” Researchers headed into their studies wanting certain results—and, lo and behold, they were getting them.

We think of the scientific process as being objective, rigorous, and even ruthless in separating out what is true from what we merely wish to be true, but in fact it’s easy to manipulate results, even unintentionally or unconsciously. “At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,” says Ioannidis. “There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.”

And:

Though scientists and science journalists are constantly talking up the value of the peer-review process, researchers admit among themselves that biased, erroneous, and even blatantly fraudulent studies easily slip through it. Nature, the grande dame of science journals, stated in a 2006 editorial, “Scientists understand that peer review per se provides only a minimal assurance of quality, and that the public conception of peer review as a stamp of authentication is far from the truth.”

Please go read...

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Yes, the dose makes the poison

Looking at my web stats, I see that this site has been visited no fewer than 29 times in the last few days under the search term "chris snowdon dose makes the poison". Why someone should so persistently associate this phrase with me, I can't say, but for that Googler, I hope the following helps:-

The dose makes the poison is a fundamental principle of toxicology. It is generally attributed to the 16th century scientist Paralcelsus, who said:

"All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."

In other words, everything is toxic and everything is harmless. It is the quantity that makes the difference. It is this basic piece of scientific understanding that makes the last Surgeon General's claim that "there is no safe level of secondhand smoke" so risible. It is also one reason why scientists scoff at the homeopathic claim that remedies become more potent as they become more diluted. And it's one reason why the term 'toxic chemicals' can be misleading. When we talk about toxic waste, everyone knows what we mean. Saying that a product contains 'toxic chemicals' implies that these chemicals are dangerous at the levels found in the product. Sometimes, however, the reality is that they could be toxic at higher quantities or under experimental conditions. That's true, but it would be true of oxygen and vitamin C too.

Ignoring the principle that the dose makes the poison makes it possible to claim that acrylamide in french fries, or "gender-bending" phthalates in shower curtains, or nitrosamines in smoker's carpets can cause cancer. It's junk. All these things can be harmful, but not at the levels found in real-world situations. (If you really need to know why these claims are junk, click here, here and here).

I hope that helps whoever was searching. I only wish I could assist the people who found the site by Googling "weasel in wales", "politicians that like fruit cakes" and "fisting with pipes". Alas, you will need to go elsewhere for that kind of information. 

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Hold onto yourself

From El Beeb:

Heart attack survivors 'fear sex'

Heart attack survivors are highly likely to avoid sex, fearing it could kill them, US researchers say.

I haven't linked to this story because of its mundane findings. Nor do I highlight it because of stupefyingly banal comments like:

"You can't predict by looking at someone if they are sexually active."

I bring it to your attention purely because of the photo they've used to illustrate it.

It's an odd photo to use for this story, but it's an odd photo anyway. The more I look at it, the odder it gets. Don't write in—I know what's going on. Someone is being hugged on a beach or in a field, right? It's just that the more you look at it, the more it looks like a double-jointed contortionist has put a t-shirt over his jumper.

No?

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Bored on a Sunday night

God help me, I've only gone and joined Twitter. My address is @cjsnowdon for what it's worth. Twitter, as Karl Marx might have said, is for fools who haven't said enough. And speaking of Marx, I've also gone and taken the Political Compass test and seem to have become more left-wing since I last took it. 

All the reading I had to do for my latest book must have affected me. The Spirit Level Delusion website is now fully operational, by the way, and the book's out tomorrow.

Normal blogging will be resumed then. Sweet dreams.

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