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ARCHIVE: LETTER: Many claims about passive smoking are inadequately justified 

Editor–George Davey Smith and Andrew N Phillips suggest that the tobacco industry attempts to promote confusion about passive smoking and disease.1 Although I was not involved with the report of the European Working Group on Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer, their central concern, I am cited as an "enthusiastic recipient of tobacco industry financial support who ... has presented models ... most favourable to the tobacco industry case." Insinuating that I distort evidence for money is most unfair. I am widely consulted on many issues and attempt always to present an unbiased assessment. For passive smoking, which I have studied in detail, I strongly believe that many claims are inadequately justified, and I say so. In fact, the authors' own article promotes confusion by presenting the relevant evidence misleadingly.

They wrongly criticise my work on bias due to misclassified smoking habits for ignoring the fact that spousal smoking inaccurately measures total exposure. . . .

Given their keen awareness of residual confounding, I find it remarkable that the authors consider the association of cot death and maternal smoking to be due to passive smoking when studies such as Mitchell et al's have found that adjustment for numerous risk factors massively weakens the association.5

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