Classic example of baseless scare story from the BBC:
Passive smoking 'doubles hearing loss risk among teens'
Passive smoking nearly doubles a teenager's risk of hearing loss, research reveals.
And the greater the exposure the greater the damage.
Investigators say the findings, from a study of over 1,500 US teens aged 12 to 19, suggest that secondhand tobacco smoke directly damages young
ears.
...
It is still unclear how much exposure could be harmful and when the damage might occur.
...
"Further research is needed to demonstrate a causal link" ..
...
So the article starts by saying the supposed effect was "revealed", closely followed by a quantitative relation (in its own short paragraph for emphasis) to make the conclusion sound scientific.
But further on the researchers say their findings only "suggest" it, and then admit that they haven't actually demonstrated a causal link!
It's like that maths paper, mentioned by J E Littlewood in his Miscellany, which started by grandly announcing "The aim of this paper is to prove that ..", and only a dozen pages later does it emerge that the aim wasn't achieved!
Passive smoking 'doubles hearing loss risk among teens'
Passive smoking nearly doubles a teenager's risk of hearing loss, research reveals.
And the greater the exposure the greater the damage.
Investigators say the findings, from a study of over 1,500 US teens aged 12 to 19, suggest that secondhand tobacco smoke directly damages young
ears.
...
It is still unclear how much exposure could be harmful and when the damage might occur.
...
"Further research is needed to demonstrate a causal link" ..
...
But further on the researchers say their findings only "suggest" it, and then admit that they haven't actually demonstrated a causal link!
It's like that maths paper, mentioned by J E Littlewood in his Miscellany, which started by grandly announcing "The aim of this paper is to prove that ..", and only a dozen pages later does it emerge that the aim wasn't achieved!
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