My, my, how convenient. Just at the time when numerous states are considering a tax increase on cigarettes, what a coincidence that this new "study" emerges, claiming that tax increases deter teens from smoking.

Funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, no less.

And how interesting that the folks at Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (also funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) just happened to know about this study before the rest of us, and issued a press release touting it.

I have yet to print out and read all 44 pages of the study, but I'm betting that once the fine print is read, it's not what it's cracked up to be.

What's more, it's UNLAWFUL for underage teens to purchase cigarettes in the first place. If these people really want to reduce teen smoking, why aren't they going all out to enforce the existing law, for goodness sake?

Why, instead, are they blatantly looking the other way (ignoring the law) and resorting to tax increases? As if we didn't know.

Click here for Tobacco-Free Kids press release.



[This message has been edited by Martha Perske (edited 04-25-2001).]

I bit the bullet and printed out all 44 pages of this report, but a lot of good it did.

I challenge any layperson, any legislator, and any media person to read this report and explain in simple English how these researchers arrived at their conclusion that increased cigarette prices (in the form of increased taxes) deter youth smoking.

It might as well have been written in Greek.

Here’s just one example of how the (convoluted) text reads:

“A discrete-time hazard model is used to assess the impact exogenous covariates have on adolescent’s probability of starting smoking. The dependent variable is known as the starting hazard. The starting hazard can be defined as the probability that an individual starts smoking in a given time period conditional on not having smoked in any previous wave of data. This probability is modeled using weighted dichotomous probit equation in all model specifications. The weights are used to account for the over-sampling of high-risk individuals in the sample. In addition, to account for the correlation among multiple observations on an individual subject a Huber/White robust method of calculating the variance-covariance matrix is used. The robust estimator relaxes the assumption of independence of observations by allowing the observations to be independent across individuals, but not independent within an individual.”

Believe me, the Tables presented in this report are equally undecipherable, at least to me. As is the explanatory note following one of these Tables, which reads: “All equations also include an intercept year, year squared, eight dichotomous region indicators . . . The critical values for the t-ratios are 2.58 (2.33), 1.96 (1.64) . . .”

And they expect the general public – not to mention the media and our legislators – to understand THIS?

No, I think not. I think rather they speak in such convoluted terms because they don’t WANT anyone to understand their methods.

Going to bed now in a disgusted state of mind.

"'Twas brillig anf the lithey toves did gyre"

from "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carol

Martha, it's amazing you could even type that. But now you know how Stanton Glantz got where he is: He wrote a statistics text book!

Sounds a lot like "Lysenkoese" to me.

I thought you all would "enjoy" it as much as I did. It helped my mood just to post the atrocious thing. (Hard to type, it was, Dennis.)

At least now I know what to file it under - "Jabberwocky"!!

What a load of Hooey. . .

Spinner, your reference to Lysenko led me to look up again the damage that he did in the Soviet Union right up into the '60s. He was THE most politically correct scientist in the history of the 20th Century. Stalin set him up as a god.

BUT... what did he do? His theories led to the deaths (and I'm not exaggerating here) of millions of his countrymen; not just Jews, not just gypsies, but of his own people. His theories (which denied simple genetics) are considered laughable today. In fact, Lysenkoism is now a pejorative term among scientists.

And yet... nobody learns. Lysenkoism rules today. The once venerable journals "Science" and "Nature" and so many others (we all know about JAMA, etc. etc.) have been taken over by latter-day Lysenkos, and I'll tell you right now, Stalin would be proud. Hitler would be proud.

Satan would be proud.

Gary, your post knocked me out. In fact, I'm printing it out to keep, because it's so powerful and so beautifully written. Thanks!

We've all heard of "Newspeak." What we have here is an example of "Sciencespeak."

And, yes, the aim is definitely to prevent
understanding. What else could it be?

Satan wouldn't be proud; Satan IS proud.

Gary, I join Wanda in thanking you for your post. "Lysenkoism" is EXACTLY the right term. And it gets me to thinking.

The aunties have well earned the "nazi" label (and they resent it very much, no matter how well deserved). Many people understand what "nazi" means, but the aunties are worse than scolding old maids, and they really deserve another label, and this is especially true for audiences that understand it such as some US "journalists."

Based on Lysenkoism, anti-smokers world-wide are another Taliban.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban rule and have recently decreed (among other things) that all non-Muslims (particularly Hindus) must identify themselves with a mark on their clothing. (An irony is that Taliban members smoke!)

Nevertheless, the aunties world-wide are Taliban, like them issuing orders about who may be educated, who may be seen about in public, who may have medicine, who may sit where in stadiums and on beaches, who may go where, who may be employed, who must be fired, who may run a business, in short, who may have the rights of ordinary citizens.

They justify themselves with a "science" that can only be called Lysenkoism. Let's call them who and what they are, Lysenkoists.

And/or Taliban.

Doing that might get some journalists to look into things.

Just a thought on a rainy Saturday.

Gary, thanks so much for explaining what Lysenkoism is, and for doing it so eloquently. Like others, I've printed it out.

You add mightily to this forum and I learn a lot from you.

I humbly thank you for your praise.