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GOLDACRE: Study with a very interesting twist 

If the media were actuarial about drawing our attention to the causes of avoidable death, newspapers would be filled with diarrhoea, Aids and cigarettes every day. In reality we know this is an absurd idea. For those interested in the scale of our fascination with rarity, one piece of research looked at a period in 2002 and found that 8,571 people had to die from smoking to generate one story on the subject from the BBC, while there were three stories for every death from vCJD.

So you’ve probably heard that smoking may prevent Alzheimer’s. It comes up in the papers, sometimes to say it is true, sometimes to say it has been refuted. Maybe you think it’s a mixed bag, that “experts are divided”. Perhaps you smoke, and joke about how it will stop you losing your marbles. . . .

So does that mean we can ignore all research that comes from people who disgust us? In Nazi Germany two researchers, Schairer and Schniger, worked on biological theories of degenerate behaviour under Professor Karl Astel, who helped organise the operation that murdered 200,000 mentally and physically disabled people.

In 1943 the researchers published a well-conducted study demonstrating a relationship between smoking and lung cancer. Their paper wasn’t mentioned in the classic Doll and Bradford Hill paper of 1950, it was referred to only four times in the 60s, once in the 70s, and then not again until 1988, despite providing a valuable early warning on a killer that would cause 100mn early deaths in the 20th century. It’s not obvious what you do with evidence from untrustworthy sources, but it’s always worth appraising its untrustworthiness with the best tools available.

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