Eh, unpopular opinion: maybe the tobacco industry was correct? Back in those days it wasn't as well known how many dubious papers come out of the scientific wor

Eh, unpopular opinion: maybe the tobacco industry was correct? Back in those days it wasn't as well known how many dubious papers come out of the scientific world, how many underpowered studies, how many fail to replicate, how many photoshopped images there are in supposedly robust bio papers. Just recently it was discovered that a top Alzheimer's lab was built on fraudulent research and had been for >15 years. And the smoking/lung cancer link is pure epidemiology. You can't see it with your own eyes because so many smokers live to old age without getting cancer. So you're forced to rely on studies that build statistical links. COVID showed us all how low the standards are in that field. Academic researchers didn't hesitate before making wild claims that weren't supported by the data, it happened over and over again and they never repented or admitted to it. Not only with COVID either. They were telling people in 1987 that AIDS would kill 20% of all heterosexuals within 3 years, they spent years trying to gin up panic about Swine Flu, they pivoted from COVID to Monkey Pox almost immediately with the WHO declaring it a health emergency, until it became clear it only really affected gay men whereupon they suddenly lost interest in telling the infected what to do. The position of the tobacco companies boiled down to: the quality of the science is poor, there are scientists who disagree with it so there isn't actually any consensus, it's all statistical, we don't really know. That's not a priori obviously a bad argument. There are tons of things that were once "known" that later became "un-known" when people took a closer look at the research, and only at the tip of the iceberg. There are still many fields that are considered beyond criticism which are riddled with fake research findings. Maybe the smoking/cancer link is somehow different and actually super robust and not at all filled with motivated reasoning like so much else. Let's hope so. But from flicking through Kessler's opinion it seems like she was terribly impressed by academia, with statements trashing the defendants witnesses as "inexperienced" because they'd only worked for corporations, or hadn't published as many peer reviewed papers. I've read peer reviewed and published papers from universities. Many were outright deceptive crap. Peer review doesn't impress me anymore. Much of the best research comes from corporations so this feels like the judge started out biased.