“Any researcher studying the health effects of burning fossil fuel, such as Enstrom, is not going to have much credibility if that researcher, Enstrom, also did research saying that inhaling burned tobacco had no negative health effects”
Your comment addresses Enstrom’s work on second-hand smoke, which (other than “global warming”) may be the most politicized area of current scientific research, and one that cries out for the sort of objective and unbiased analysis of data which I see in Enstrom’s work.
The evaluation of research on second-hand smoke is so badly politicized that even the Washington Post has had to comment on the dishonesty inherent in the field:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012901158.html
And that research has been so badly politicized that the World Health Organization has tried to repress its own research when it didn’t conform to the conventional wisdom that secondhand smoke was a deadly threat:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021128202555/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/03/08/wtob08.html
In Enstrom’s own words: “I examined mortality risks associated with both active and passive smoking over a 39-year follow-up period. I published a paper with these findings in the May 17, 2003 British Medical Journal [3] (Pdf). This is the largest, most detailed, and most transparent epidemiologic paper on passive smoking and mortality ever published in a major medical journal. I found no relationship with passive smoking, but found a strong, long-term relationship with active smoking. In the years since its publication, no errors have been identified in the study, not even by the ACS, which possesses the underlying data. The BMJ editor has strongly defended my paper [4]. Although there is nothing wrong with my BMJ paper, since May 2003 I have been subjected to a massive and continuous campaign of ad hominem attack and character assassination, as typified by the “Enstrom & Tobacco” comments on the SourceWatch article about me.”
Enstrom should be applauded for the courage he’s shown in his willingness to report factual results even when they bring about the rage of powerful forces and generate unwarranted personal attacks on his character, which is what I consider your comment to be yet another example of.
I’m just a poster at free republic, so it is more important what the judge thought.