Tobacco controllers will debate, but only on their terms
Saturday, April 11, 2015 at 16:20 Simon Chapman and some of his followers have responded to yesterday's post with a series of tweets.
Explaining his decision to decline an invitation to take part in an Oxford Union debate about the tobacco industry (‘This House believes that the tobacco industry is morally reprehensible’), Chapman wrote:
I don't assist anti-vaxers, climate change denialists & other miscreants to get platforms either.
That was rather different to his initial response to the Oxford Union:
Thanks, xxxx. I've no financial support to attend sorry, and some clashes too. Very nice of you to think of me.
No hifalutin argument there. Just a simple reference to cost and other commitments.
Ignoring this Fran Barlow, a "green and left-wing school-teacher", tweeted her support for Chapman:
Denying credibility to faux debates can be seen as supportive of healthy discourse.
Others responded:
Some debates are useful. Others should not be lent credibility.
You can't debate science with passionate, irrational "beliefs". Life's too short.
From that we can deduce that tobacco controllers will debate but only on their terms - and their idea of "healthy discourse" is more akin to a one party state.
Meanwhile, if anyone is driven by irrational "beliefs" it's the more extreme anti-smokers who believe the merest whiff of tobacco smoke can endanger someone's health, while the sight of a complete stranger smoking in public will condemn a child to a lifetime addiction and an early grave.
Neither argument is supported by evidence yet I rarely if ever hear them disputed by public health campaigners who will happily support any anti-smoking sentiment if it edges us closer to a 'smoke-free' (sic) world.
As for Chapman, I'd have enjoyed crossing swords with this egotistical popinjay but it's his choice. His absence, and the arguments put forward by his disciples on Twitter, say more about tobacco control than I ever could.
.@simonclark_ @OxfordUnion I don't assist anti-vaxers, climate change denialists & other miscreants to get platforms either
— Simon Chapman AO (@SimonChapman6) April 10, 2015@MorphRv @simonclark_ @OxfordUnion @SimonChapman6 Denying credibility to faux debates can be seen as supportive of healthy discourse.
— Fran Barlow (@fran_b__) April 10, 2015@MorphRv @simonclark_ @OxfordUnion @SimonChapman6 That's his right. Some debates are useful. Others should not be lent credibility.
— Fran Barlow (@fran_b__) April 10, 2015@SimonChapman6 @simonclark_ @OxfordUnion Nor should you. You can't debate science with passionate, irrational "beliefs". Life's too short.
— Leigh Miranda (@LeighMiranda4) April 10, 2015
Reader Comments (5)
Chapman and his fellow travelers are the real miscreants. They won't debate because they know their entire totalitarian crusade is based on a house of cards. Their arguments are based on ideology not science. Their goal is social control not health.
Why should he waste his precious, valuable and unpaid time with low life's like the Oxford Union? Far better he spends the time with 'Important' people such as a Dept. of the DoH, the APPG and any other of the few tax payer funded minorities to gasp at his every word. No need for debate there, is there?
Can't blame him. If I had dept's and MP's under my 'magical' spell I'd probably do the same.
But then, I'm not funded by the taxpayer.
Fran Barlow's excuses for suppressing free speech and open debate belong in another more repressive era, or perhaps in an Orwellian future?
She describes herself as left wing as does Leigh Miranda albeit less directly. Public health discourse continues to be dominated by the far left, which explains the intolerance and the suppression of opposing or nonconformist views. That has been the modus operandi of the far left and the far right throughout history.
I hope that someone shows up for the debate. It is the sort of thing that students ought to be discussing.
Unfortunately, with Dave or Ed as PM there will be no need for public health discussions or parliamentary debates. Both will bend the knee to the far left authoritarians, partly because it will give them an excuse to steal money from unpopular businesses such as tobacco companies.
For Tobacco Controllers read Gutless Bullies hiding behind the skirts of Government and Pharma.
I'm worried that Chapman seems to believe he's a scientist.
As I recall, he's essentially a sociologist who has dabbled in the cultural/media studies field, and got his doctorate at a time when field research (as in talking to large numbers of relevant people and gathering their opinions or factual details of their lives) went out of fashion and, on the grounds of 'cost effectiveness', was replaced by abstract theoretical considerations of other abstract ideas or simply previous texts.
Having, in my time, both produced and marked lengthy post-graduate semiological analyses of vital topics such as the 'message' of the Nike 'Swoosh' logo I am uncomfortably aware that such stuff is fun but pointless unless linked to weightier research about real people living in the real world.
I think it is also worth pointing out that many Australian 'cultural studies' academics owe their continued employment to a decision of the Australian government (as in the UK in the 1990's) to link teaching of the subject to hard economic applications of the discipline, such as encouraging cultural tourism by upper income visitors and, in general, marketing lifestyle choices that government would find cost effective but would prefer not to have to justify with hard, scientific evidence.