ethics

Lange, M. (1994, February 11). The X-Files. Young at Heart. 20th Century Fox Television.

It should go without saying that public health institutions and researchers have an obligation to tell the truth. In principle, there aren’t many stakeholders in e-cigarette research who would argue otherwise. But questions about whose truth and how information about e-cigarettes should be communicated have been highly controversial.

Partly this is because e-cigarettes haven’t been around long (relatively speaking), and research takes time.

But while influential figures on all sides of the e-cigarette debate in the US have increasingly acknowledged a body of evidence that vaping is less harmful than combustible cigarettes, the US public has increasingly come to believe the opposite. It’s unlikely that this outcome results from even-handed cautions against jumping to conclusions. People have been inundated with a particular message about the current state of research on vaping, and that message is false. Continue reading →