Health – there is a disconnect between our understanding of “statistics”. Let’s take lung cancer for example. The way I’d imagine a study done is either to measure incidence in a representative sample, or take the total population/population with lung cancer, and withing population with lung cancer smokers/non-smokers. Provided that responsible scientists or statisticians are working on it, the results are indisputable.
My rough math, which took some digging on the CDC’s website, estimates the following incidence: 1/7200 incidence of lung cancer in non-smokers, smokers have 1/360 incidence of lung cancer. What does the CDC and its literature, and all healthcare professionals say? 20 times more likely. This number is 100% true, but it is derived from the two incidence rates, and phrased in the way to maximize emotional import. That is problematic. There is someone poring over all the results of the studies, and figuring out how to use the numbers to most demonize smoking.