 | A fact from Geoffrey Kabat appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 24 March 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Comments on article
editThe article “Geoffrey Kabat” is libelous and presents a one-sided and badly-distorted account of the controversy over the 2003 Enstrom and Kabat BMJ paper on passive smoking. Assuming that the editors of this article are open-minded and fair, the problem is that they are repeating the line taken by the American Cancer Society, whose Vice President for Epidemiology at the time, Michael J. Thun, came out and denounced our paper even before the paper was published online. He then orchestrated a campaign to smear the paper and its authors. The campaign had more to do with politics than with science or public health. The political nature of the attack is clear from the numerous references in the article to the District Court ruling by Judge Gladys Kessler citing our paper as an instance of tobacco industry influence — in fact, there was no tobacco industry influence. The American Cancer Society is a charity and an advocacy organization and has its own motivations and conflicts-of-interest. The charge that the paper came from the tobacco industry and was funded by the tobacco industry is false. This charge and other misrepresentations of the paper are addressed below. First, only the last 7 years of Enstrom’s 38-year follow-up of the California portion of the American Cancer Society cohort was funded with monies that originated from the tobacco industry. Funding was in the form of a grant from the Center for Indoor Air Quality (CIAR). This entity was a center for funding research on indoor air pollution (including passive smoking) using monies contributed by the tobacco industry. However, funding decisions were insulated from industry influence. Applications were reviewed by academic scientists and were judged on their scientific merit. The previous 31 years of follow-up had been funded by the State of California. Second, in analyzing and publishing their results, Enstrom and Kabat had no contact with the tobacco industry, which was not informed of the study and did not see the results until they were published. Third, the paper underwent the most stringent review by editors and statisticians at the British Medical Journal who determined that the study presented valuable data that had been carefully analyzed. (The entire publication history of the paper is posted on the BMJ website.) Fourth, in spite of the uproar caused by the American Cancer Society’s attack on the authors and the alleged “errors” in the paper, no one has identified any error that invalidates the results. In a letter to the editor, Enstrom and Kabat explained that some of the criticisms were factually wrong (such as the claim that in the 1950s and 1960s “everyone was exposed to tobacco smoke” and, therefore, there was no non-exposed group, while other criticisms did not invalidate the results (see page 504 below). Five, in spite of calls for the BMJ to retract the paper, the editor-in-chief, Richard Smith, defended publication of the paper, saying that when good work has been done, failure to publish it because the results are unpopular will distort the scientific record. Another editor at the BMJ, Alison Tonks, in a commentary on the letters to the editor pointed out that only 3% of the letters to the editor made any reference to actual data from the paper (see pdf below). Six, in the uproar, few critics took the time to read the 3,000-word paper with 10 tables. The fact that the authors showed that active smokers, even at low smoking levels (1-9 cigarettes per day), had increased risks of lung cancer and coronary heart disease got no attention.
In conclusion, the response to the paper was not about the science. It was about portraying two well-established scientists as shills for the tobacco industry in order to strengthen restrictions on smoking in public and advance the cause of discouraging smoking — something both authors are in favor of.
The controversy over the Enstrom and Kabat paper was more about politics than about science or public health.
Treatment of this controversy on Wikipedia demonstrates how well-intentioned people, who are not conversant with the discipline involved (i.e., epidemiology) can be badly misled by one-sided, bad-faith narratives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gkabat (talk • contribs) 13:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
- First, thanks for coming to the talk page. I've been meaning to take a second look at this page for awhile, so I'll see if I can look through this at a later date.
- The key thing between your comments here and proposed edits below is that biography articles should mostly be focused independent third-party discussion about the subject. I see you're including a lot of your papers below, but the most helpful sources are going to be independent ones not from any advocacy website, but scientific sources or sometimes newspapers (see WP:MEDPOP since that would apply to a lot of your work). Just for general background, your commentary above couldn't be used as a source, but journal editor comments you reference could be potential sources.
- In the Scientific Work section of the current article, it does looks like it needs some general cleanup or restructuring. That said, we follow what's called due weight in sources. If The American Cancer Society criticized how one of your papers used their database (though the sourcing on that statement is currently incomplete and to an advocacy website that would need to be fixed), that does appear to be something that would be normally included in an article. However, that inclusion would also be in the context of trying to summarize how WP:MEDRS sources discuss (negatively or positively) that study. That's just to give you a general idea of how things work at Wikipedia without getting into specific edits yet. KoA (talk) 17:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks very much for this initial response. As I tried to convey in my opening block paragraph, and in a different way in my "revision" of the Geoffrey Kabat bio, it is actually tricky to determine what are valid sources to rely on. My main point is that the Wikipedia article selected 1 out of 155 peer-reviewed scientific papers from a 45-year career because it got some adverse publicity. The reason I included the details in both the intro para and the rewrite of the bio is because it is very easy to portray our paper as corrupt and influenced by the tobacco industry if one ignores all the information that is available and that I have packed into my write-up. I will be happy to lay out these points more clearly. But the fact that the journal didn't retract the paper under such tremendous public pressure and defended it in their comments (editor Alison Tonks) and editor-in-chief Richard Smith should be taken into account, no?
- Let me point out something that became clear to me. If it weren't for the BMJ affair I believe there would be no Geoffrey Kabat Wikipedia page. This is because the driving reason behind the page is notoriety and the fact the ACS published their condemnation of the paper. It is just not fair or intellectually honest to leave things there and to only give credit to the ACS spokesman and disregard all of the positive evaluations of our work.
- The point that became clear to me, as I started to say, is that my colleague epidemiologists -- even one who have published more than me and have made solid contributions to the field -- do NOT have Wikipedia pages. No one is interested in the day-to-day, year-to-year, work that constitutes normal science. So, I believe the only reason that this page was written about me is because of the BMJ brouhaha.
- This page has been there since, as best I can tell, 2015, and it is utter slander and a hit-job, whether the person who wrote knows it or not. So, either this should be corrected and the full story laid out, of the page should be taken down.
- Again, I really appreciate your looking into this and I will be happy to supply you with any information I can.
- Geoffrey Kabat Gkabat (talk) 22:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
Corrective to current "Geoffrey Kabat" bio
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Geoffrey C. Kabat is an American epidemiologist, cancer researcher, and author. Over a forty-five-year career, Kabat has studied a wide range of lifestyle, clinical, and environmental exposures in relation to cancer and other diseases, and mortality. He is most noted for his work characterizing the role of smoking, alcohol consumption, passive smoking, diet, obesity, the metabolic syndrome, and attained height, as well as environmental exposures, including pesticides and electromagnetic fields, in relation to the risk of cancer at different sites.
Education
After obtaining a doctorate in Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, he published a book on Dostoevsky’s world view as expressed in his journalism and his fiction. He then switched fields to epidemiology, doing a postdoctoral fellowship and obtaining an M.S. in epidemiology and biostatistics from Columbia University. He has been a researcher at the American Health Foundation, a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, as well as being on the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Scientific Work
Kabat’s research spans a broad range of topics, and his publications put him in the top 2 percent of scientists (h-Index 68). He has published over 155 peer-reviewed scientific papers.[1] His work with colleagues has investigated a number of novel risk factors and has refined the role of established risk factors for different cancers, as well as the physiologic mechanisms by which they may affect risk.
Major focuses include: cigarette smoking (including tar level and mentholated cigarettes) and cancer at different sites[2,3,4,5]; the interaction of smoking and alcohol consumption on oropharyngeal cancer[6]; the role of obesity and the metabolic syndrome in colorectal, breast, and endometrial cancer[7,8,9]; hormones and brain cancer[10,11]; estrogen metabolism and breast cancer [12,13,14]; electromagnetic fields and breast cancer[15,16]; height and cancer at different sites[17,18,19]; meta-analysis of glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.[20]
Throughout Kabat’s career, the only work that has sparked controversy is a paper on passive smoking published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 2003.[21] This controversy requires clarification.
Starting in 1981, Kabat took an early interest in lung cancer occurring in people who never smoked and, specifically, in the question of passive smoking, emphasizing the need to collect accurate information on lifetime exposure to passive smoking in different settings and at different periods of life in order to accurately characterize exposure.[22,23, 24]Having done extensive work on the effects of cigarette smoking, Kabat emphasized the importance of putting passive smoke exposure in perspective by comparing it to the risk associated with active smoking, rather than focusing on passive smoking in isolation.[25] In the early 1990s, he served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board panel to evaluate the health effects of passive smoking.[26]
The 2003 BMJ paper[21], which sparked a controversy, represented a collaboration between Kabat, who was at Stony Brook, and James Enstrom of UCLA. It was an outgrowth of both researchers’ interest in lung cancer occurring in never smokers. Enstrom had done extensive work using data from the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) large prospective study of 1 million Americans.[27] Kabat’s work had involved case-control studies, which are subject to several biases, which prospective studies are not subject to. Therefore, when Enstrom contacted him in the late 1990s to ask if he would be interested in using the ACS dataset to examine the health effects of passive smoking, Kabat was enthusiastic. The resulting paper is one of the most detailed studies of passive smoking and mortality. The authors failed to find an association of spousal smoking with lung cancer or coronary heart disease mortality. Although the paper was attacked by Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, who attempted to discredit it based on its funding source[28], the attack had more to do with politics than with a serious scientific critique.[29,30,25] The critics ignored the fact that the tobacco industry had no involvement with the research and that the last 7 years of funding for the 38-year follow-up, which came from the tobacco industry, were awarded by an independent clearing-house overseen by respected scientists. The tobacco industry had no involvement in the paper and was unaware of it until it was published. Furthermore, critics also ignored the fact that the paper had undergone rigorous review by editors and statisticians and that, in their paper, Enstrom and Kabat had demonstrated robust associations of active smoking with mortality, even in light smokers. The editor-in-chief of the BMJ defended publication of the paper, stating that, when high-quality work has been done, failure to publish it because the results are not popular is to distort the historical record.[31,32] Another BMJ editor pointed out that only 3 percent of the irate letters to the editor referred to data from the paper.[32] To date, no one has been able to show any error in the paper, and its results are well within the range of results of prospective studies published in the U.S.[28,29,25]
Books
Kabat is the author of two books that examine a variety of health risks that have received widespread publicity, as well as other risks that, while important, have received less attention. Hyping Health Risks, published in 2008 by Columbia University Press, examines the cancer risk to the public posed by environmental exposures, such as environmental pollution, electromagnetic fields, residential radon, and passive smoking and shows how these risks have been distorted or overstated.[33] David A. Savitz reviewed the book writing, “This book forcefully examines that question—What goes wrong when the good intentions of scientists and activists are based on weak epidemiologic findings.”[34]In the New England Journal of Medicine, Barbara Gastel wrote “Despite its minor limitations, Hyping Health Risks can interest and aid a variety of readers… for educated general readers, the book can engage and enlighten regarding the complex context in which known and suspected health risks are identified, explored and acted on.”[35] Neil Pearce wrote in the International Journal of Epidemiology that he "became more frustrated and less impressed as [he] worked [his] way through the book" and criticized the book for its "lack of balance".[36]
Reviewing Getting Risk Right (2016) in the Skeptical Inquirer, Terence Hines wrote that Kabat "more than accomplishes" his goals of discovering how it is that extraordinary progress is made solving some problems but little is made solving others and why instances of progress get little attention, while scientifically questionable issues get more attention. Hines said of the chapter reviewing the question of whether cell phones cause cancer, it "alone is worth the price of the book."[37] In a review in the Washington Post, Susan Okie wrote, “His vivid description of the political advocacy, dueling media campaigns and rival faction in these areas make it easy to see why so many people remain worried and uncertain. …After considering issues where science hasn’t put controversies to rest, it’s a relief to read about two cases in which persistent investigators and elegant studies unequivocally nailed down an environmental cause of disease.”[38] Writing in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Patricia Hartge stated, “The problems Kabat describes are enormous and not ‘just academic.’ Bad policy is enacted and valuable research energy is wasted because some epidemiologic topics stay active long after they have been settled.”[39](https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/186/3/385/3979721 )
Journalistic writings
In addition to peer-reviewed scientific papers, Kabat has written articles for the general public explaining what is known about potential health risks that have received a lot of publicity but which are subject to misunderstanding https://www.geoffreykabat.com . These include: electromagnetic fields (EMF) from electric power lines; the chemical bis-phenol A (BPA); cell phones and brain cancer; pesticides and, particularly, the herbicide glyphosate; the use of Chinese herbs as alternative medicine; the health effects of coffee; and the decline in sperm count. The articles have appeared on Forbes, Slate, Quillette, Issues in Science and Technology, and the Genetic Literacy Project websites.
References
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1. Search Results for author Kabat G. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=kabat+g ) on PubMed. 2. Wynder, Ernst L; Kabat, Geoffrey C. (March 1984). “The effect of low-yield cigarette smoking on lung cancer risk” Cancer. 62 (6):1223-30. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2842035/ ) = 3. Wynder, Ernst L; Augustine A.; Kabat G.C.; Hebert J.R. (February 1988). “Effect of type of cigarette smoked on bladder cancer risk.” Cancer. 61 (3): 622-7. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3338029/ ) 4. Augustine, Annamma; Hebert J.R.; Kabat G.C.; Wynder E.L. (August 1988). “Bladder cancer in relation to cigarette smoking.” Cancer Research. 48 (15:4405-8) (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3390836/ ) 5. Kabat, Geoffrey C. (September 2003). “Fifty years' experience of reduced-tar cigarettes: what do we know about their health effects?” Inhalation Toxicology. 15 (11):1059-102. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12955615/ )
28. Thun, Michael J. “More misleading science from the tobacco industry.” (July 2003) BMJ. 327 (7418) E237-E238. doi: 10.1136/bmjusa.03070002 :352 https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7418/E237)
33. Kabat, Geoffrey C. Getting Risk Right: Understanding the Science of Elusive Health Risks, Columbia University Press, 2016.
(https://doi.org/10.1056%2FNEJMbrev0807040
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