«Post hoc Censorship» Editor-in-Chief and World ““Waterpipe””™ Millionaire Experts Scared by The Sacred Narghile’s "Undeclared" Comfits of Interests !

TOPIC: Wasim MAZIAK' call for action published in the Addiction journal (Sep 4, 2008) with a "For Debate" label. Here we go !

Returning readers will remember that the above libelous paper (which also sealed the calamitous bankruptcy of the almost one-decade old world ““waterpipe””™ “peer-reviewed” “good science”) was commented upon by the Observatory on Hookah or Health in a previous article

Finally, and for reasons that we still ignore, our friend decided to test whether the “For Debate” official label was sincere or, once again, mere hypocrisy. Poor Man ! He prepared a polite “Letter to the Editor” and sent it to the above journal. His article was titled: “Shisha Smoking. Time for a Radical Change in Research Methodology ».

No need to say that, as usual, he debunked each of the main ludicrous points raised by Wasim MAZIAK in his call for action (on ““waterpipe””™). He said the reception of his manuscript was acknowledged to him on October 23, 2008 by the journal. His paper was so powerful that on January 21, 2009, after back’n’forth’n’tug’of’war, it was officially accepted for publication by the Editor in Chief (Robert WEST).
Copy of the officially accepted Letter: HERE

Wasim MAZIAK was then informed of this acceptance and offered the right to respond. However, our friend was surprised to learn that he would not necessarily be authorized to publish a rebuttal to the second letter by Wasim MAZIAK. Strange fairplay and understanging of democracy in the Addiction journal, he thought...

Wasim MAZIAK had apparently not scientific argument to put forward, so he did what most of anti-smoking researchers of the world have been doing for two decades now (particularly in the Tobacco Control and Nicotine and Tobacco Research journals and, more recently, in Pediatrics [Don’t miss our NOTE about Brian PRIMACK and Thomas EISSENBERG at the end of this article]): resorting to LIBEL, with, of course, no possibility for the attacked individual to publish a response to defamation.

More recently, two INNOVATIONS (!) were brought to the defense and attack system of antismoking researchers: PLAGIARISM and OPPROBRIUM. The latter is something different from defamation. It is believed to have a stronger impact on all social strata, not only in the science field. The point is to name independent tobacco researchers “DENIALISTS”. See how this works: Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond ?

After 3 months of “peer-review’ of a simple Letter to the Editor, Robert WEST invented (hold your breath Folks !) the pretext that our friend (as the main scientific contributor since no other non-antismoking tobacco researcher was identified in the world…) of The Sacred Narghile )), had a VERY SERIOUS comfit of interest (sort of BIG MONEY) because there would be there (on this site) a mysterious link that would lead to another not less mysterious that would lead in its turn to a retailer (!), etc… My God, sounds like a game in Alice in Wonderland, Bob !

In his letter to Robert WEST (February 5, 2009), our friend wrote: “However, I should be grateful if you could tell me which mysterious “links” are those which lead to not less mysteriously secret wealthy funding sources… I am anxious to know. If you think of a site like Hookah Culture, non commercial and run (and not updated) by a US student, then why don’t you accuse the anti-smoking researchers of the BACCHUS team who cite it [7] ? I am afraid there is a great deal of double standard in your judgment… The Sacred Narghile has absolutely no conflict of interest to declare and, as its main scientific contributor, I can swear before God (as US-Americans do) or any other Super Supranational Power, including WHO TobReg, that it has never received a single dollar from any source”.

NOTES:
1. above URLs inserted by the Observatory.
2. The BACCHUS experts state: “Other websites promote hookah use as chic and elegant (hookahculture.com) or as part of a unique lifestyle (insidehookah.com) and hookahs as objects of religious veneration (sacrednarghile.com)”. Source: BACCHUS (White Paper on Hookah Use). FUNNY QUESTION: Since Bacchus is the Greek god of wine, is this an "Undeclared Competing Interest" ?

> Kamal’s integral response to Robert WEST (Feb 5, 2009) can be found: HERE

CALL TO ALL VISITORS: Help us identify the mysterious link on The Sacred Narghile !

ROBERT WEST AND THE CASE OF TWO BRAVE ISRAELI RESEARCHERS

With the above case concerning an independent researcher and a previous one, Robert WEST, Editor-in-chief of the Addiction journal, appears to be a “post hoc censorhip” expert, a phrase used by 3 prominent and independent experts in the field of Addiction (Damned and be unpublished ? in Addiction Research and Theory, 2002).

Robert WEST also attacked the two Israeli authors of a masterpiece in tobacco research: a book titled “A Critique of Nicotine Addiction”: « The book grew out of interest sparked in the authors who had done a partial review of the literature which was commissioned by a firm of lawyers one of whose clients was a tobacco company. That connection was used by the Editors of Addiction as the justification for a major editorial outcry (N.B. not a book review) under the banner "Another mirror shattered? Tobacco industry involvement suspected in a book which claims that nicotine is not addictive" (Edwards, G., Babor, T., Hall, W. West, R. 2002). »(same source as above)

A MONUMENT OF HYPOCRISY... DON'T MISS these brave Tel Aviv-based researchers' reaction to this global hypocrisy (Harm Reduction Journal: July 3, 2008). They also respond, from their own viewpoint, to Wasim MAZIAK, international lessons giver (*), and raise Jack HENNINGFIELD's (Top Tobacco and Nicotine Expert, WHO TobReg) blatant failure to declare his huge competing interests in a journal in which his colleagues (Wasim MAZIAK, Thomas EISSENBERG, Alan SHIHADEH, Kenneth WARD) had raised a fabricated comfit of interest against the author of the critique of the WHO flawed report.

(*) in twisted epidemiology, shoddy science, blindly-aligned geopolitics and double standard ethics.

What about Robert WEST’s conflicts of interest ?

« Robert West has received research funds, travel funds and consultancy fees from pharmaceutical companies which manufacture nicotine replacement products and other treatments for nicotine dependence ».

SOURCE : Edwards, G., Babor, T., Hall, W. & West, R. (2002). Editorial: Another mirror shattered? Tobacco industry involvement suspected in a book which claims that nicotine is not addictive. Addiction 97: 1-5.

Great !
However, Robert WEST, as one of the heads of such a “self-righteous crusade”, did not declare his comfits of interests in a recent book he has authored (Theory of Addiction. Blackwell Publ. 2006), therefore trampling underfoot the stringent ethics he wishes others to stick to…. How would you call this: HYPOCRISY, DOUBLE STANDARD OR BOTH ?

NOTE ABOUT Brian PRIMACK, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Thomas EISSENBERG

Brian PRIMACK, Michele WALSH, Cindy BRYCE and Thomas EISSENBERG have authored a recent libel in the Pediatrics journal. «Dr Primack was supported in part by a physician faculty scholar award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation […]», the study says. Apparently, their strong funding was not a guarantee against the numerous errors and misquotations in their study….Hummm...
Then, what about this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ? It is, according to a Public Health professor at Boston University, “heavily underwritten by the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson”… Humm…. More scandals about this dodgy foundation helping Big Pharma to sell off its stuff on the FORCES site.

As for Thomas EISSENBERG, a world ""Waterpipe""™ expert, read about his undeclared competing interests swept under the carpet by Nicotine and Tobacco Research, the same journal known for having... Endorse[d] a Scientific Error as Big and Carcinogenic as a Yemeni Narghile Bowl !

What a wonderful world we are a living in !

OUR FRIEND’S COMFITS OF INTEREST

He is always proud to say, when he is invited to do so by those angry and heinous mobs of defamers:
I have never received direct or indirect funding neither from pharmaceutical companies (nicotine "replacement" therapies and products) nor from the tobacco industry. I was the first to publish results of (ambient and alveolar) Carbon Monoxide levels in hookah lounges and their patrons (Tobaccology thesis 1998; Alcoologie 1999; Doctoral thesis 2000) and subsequently issued public health recommendations in this respect. Out of this concern, I have participated by year 2004 in the design of a harm reduction hookah (cutting down CO by 95%) of which I am an official co- inventor (Patent 2005. "Narguile a allumage simplifie" [Narghile with simplified ignition]. Appl. EP20050291196. Filed 3 June. Published 14 Dec). My participation in the project was frozen by Autumn 2004. However, the official termination was formalised only by 15 June 2005, date by which I have signed away and ceded all my rights regarding the invention (legally certified by State Attorney in Paris).

More details here (about this world famous E-Letter that SHOOK THEIR WORLD …) : HERE and THERE

It is astounding that, while Kamal has published numerous pioneering studies and critiques (on cancer, radioactivity, hookah active and passive smoking, etc.) –not to mention his numerous E-Letters-, these angry mobs couldn’t find, after almost 5 years of a neo McCarthyst witch hunt on the Internet, but one fabricated comfit of interest in the form of a E-Letter (the first of his life !) sent to Tobacco Control (an antismoking journal: “scientific” arm of the openly PFIZER sponsored Globalink anti-smoking network, aiming at implementing the World Prohibition of Tobacco thanks to the to the so-called FCTC, the brain Formatting Convention on Tobacco Control).


HIGHLY RELEVANT LINKS

Comfits of Interest, WHO TobReg, Globalink, Tobacco Control, etc. : Double Standard and/or Hypocrisy ?

““Waterpipe””™: Time for Action on Scientific Integrity and Accountability, Sacking, and Paying Back Funding of Useless Biased ““Waterpipe””™ Research

“Anti-Tobacco” Organisations Exposed: Official Scientific Trustworthy Source States that Their Objective is making "global public health" history

Global perspective on tobacco control. Part II. The future of tobacco control: making smoking history ? (Simon CHAPMAN, ex-Editor-in-chief of Tobacco Control)

All Hookah Addicts of the World, Let’s All Chant…ix !

NEXT TIME: if necessary, more and more on comfits of interest by world top "tobacco control" and ““waterpipe””™ experts: Hammond, Henningfield, and so on Old Chap !

YOU ARE NOT ON THE HOME PAGE of the OBSERVATORY on HOOKAH OR HEALTH (Narghile, "Waterpipe"™, Health, Risks, Dangers, Diseases, Tar, Nicotine, Cancer). CLICK HERE to go there !