Worst pollution on air or in print?: More junk science from The Lancet

While Swedish health authorities were putting forward nonsense about snus, the highly reputed British medical journal The Lancet was releasing a “study” purporting to show that exposure to traffic was the leading proximate cause of heart attacks. The researchers also claimed that air pollution triggered more heart attacks than getting angry, having sex, snorting cocaine, smoking marijuana or suffering a respiratory infection. The study authors based their conclusions on a “meta-regression analysis” of 36 specially selected “individual and population” studies which they found on science websites and databases.

Although their methodology is suspect, their “findings” were quite promptly and uncritically reported on by a range of media outlets, including Reuters and the Huffington Post. Was this because most journalists agree with the conclusions?

Regardless of what the reasons for the media enthusiasm might be, ACSH’s Jody Manley notes that the “researchers have almost nothing to back up their claims.”

ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross concurs, asking “How did this nonsense get published? It seems that recently The Lancet will publish almost anything that suits its agenda, whatever the evidence base is — or is not.”