We are AstroTurf

[didius]

I used to get frustrated, now i just laugh if they think its all a big conspiracy. These are highly delusional people we're dealing with

 

[Diche]

Check 1 - look up definition of astroturf in the urban dictionary

Check 2 - laugh

Check 3 - wonder where the backhanders are and why am I not getting any

I wish I was getting paid to do this, there is nothing better in life than a job that you feel passionate about and believe in

 

[knome]

One of the Twitterers in the OP is Dr Martin Rees. He does modern internety funding stuff for his research via Thinkable...

Not on Thinkable? Sign-up to be part of a revolutionary new funding and engagment model for science.

I kid you not - it actually says "engagment model for science"

http://www.thinkable.org/Martin

LMFAO!

 

[didius]

Does the funding for the model not stretch to a spell checker? or a competent writer

 

[man_d]

Yeah someone alerted us to this on Twitter earlier but I can't find the sodding tweet to respond to them. I might use the cash we were given from BAT to hire a private social media luvvie to do it for us. Or should we spend it on coke and hookers instead?

I realise I'm late to the party but here you go https://twitter.com/martdrees/status/520406136915124226

 

[steffijade]

One of the Twitterers in the OP is Dr Martin Rees. He does modern internety funding stuff for his research via Thinkable...



I kid you not - it actually says "engagment model for science"

Thinkable - Martin Rees

LMFAO!

Presumably, that means they want to 'engag' actual scientific research results and push cherry picked junk science instead?

If they can suppress the truth about the harm reduction capabilities of vaping, it might just keep people smoking and thus ensure an adequate future supply of heart disease sufferers. Obviously, this will also mean a bigger market for the drugs that Dr Rees wants to develop.

Some might consider that to be an ulterior motive.

 

[junglist]

I realise I'm late to the party but here you go https://twitter.com/martdrees/status/520406136915124226

Cheers for that, couldn't find the posts so assumed they had been deleted. Now that I can see the whole twitter conversation you can see that the comment stems from ben_hr introducing this item on SoundCloud:
[SC]https://soundcloud.com/medicalobserver/e-cigarettes-controversy-aprof-renee-bittoun[/SC]

Listen to the opening minute or two, where Professor Bittoun starts to talk about products. She is asked by the presenter to briefly state what e-cigarettes are. She says "Well, actually there are two forms of these things and there are multitudes of them and I strongly suggest that if anyone wants to have a look how many there are go to a website called The Planet of the Vapes." So that may be the reason why Dr Ress then linked to us and hash-tagged us as astroturf. Must admit that this phrase was a new one on me!

The SoundCloud interview is a good listen, I have transcribed the first section of it here and if you read / listen maybe you can get a flavour for why these guys may feel that vaping is a Big Tobacco funded initiative. They are of the opinion that anything with nic in it feeds cash back to the big tobacco cartels and therefore must be stopped. That vaping is just a continuation of this cycle of tobacco related addiction. All a bit tin-foil-hat really, which is disappointing coming from medical professionals who I hope would have had a more logical thought process.

Professor Bittoun, from the last parts of the interview, obviously works with the "more challenging" addicts, those with mental health and drug abuse issues. They use Zyban and Champix as well and in there she mentions a 60% success rate from some study or other. Really don't have time to look into this as much as I would like as there is a lot more would like to post here but just not got the time on what is a pretty pointless post. She states as well not enough evidence to show that vaping is a good cessation product. For the head of the Smoking Research Program I would have expected her to be a lot more clued up about ecigs than she is. Her naivety in some areas was shocking to be honest. Anyway, here's a transcript of the first bit:

========================================

Professor Bittoun: "Well, actually there are two forms of these things and there are multitudes of them and I strongly suggest that if anyone wants to have a look how many there are go to a website called The Planet of the Vapes. That's an interesting website that shows you how many hundreds and hundreds of types there are, and they range from having nicotine in them to not having any nicotine in them at all at all. And so what basically the principle is is it's an inhaled vapour of a nicotine, the propellant could be a glycol type of propellant that actually brings the nicotine deep into your lungs, to a point, or just a flavouring that's got no nicotine in it at all. The product itself might look like a cigarette, it might look like a pen, it has a battery operated - usually a battery operated - component to it, and basically people inhale from it - sometimes they light up at one end of them.

"Now, so the dilemma that we've got with these products are that - do they work to help smokers quit or not, are they just a nicotine containing product that really is the basis of a continuation of the addiction, or do they actually get people off smoking."

Presenter: "So where do you sit?"

Professor Bittoun: "Well I, like many of my colleagues, equivocate on the problem and this split between public health groups, vast split, polarising the whole public health community on smoking is that, is this the 21st century cigarette and that tobacco companies are behind it full blast, or is this a harm reduction strategy that those who can't stop smoking, that continue to smoke, that die from it, is this a better option? And I sit somewhere, probably now increasingly more so I would be on (pause) caution, serious caution. There is no quality control for any of these products so we don't know what people are actually inhaling."

Presenter: "There's also very little evidence base on the product as well"

Professor Bittoun: "There's that too we don’t really know which one of these products actually helps anybody. And b will they become dependent on this and is this a consumer issue. So the next thing happens is people are doing this for the rest of their lives and having to access this."

Presenter: "It sort of says to me that we are confusing the political and the clinical arguments. So the political argument partly is well the nicotine used in the e-cigarettes comes from big tobacco so we have such a long history of suspicion of our interaction with big tobacco that it makes us innately cautious. But we also know that as the (?) people say that people smoke for the nicotine but die from the smoke. So clinically we know that nicotine, unless it's in overdose, is a pretty safe drug and that if you just give them nicotine and remove the other toxins it is a harm reduction strategy."

Professor Bittoun: "It is most definitely a harm reduction strategy but we have always been suspicious of where the nicotine comes from in all the nicotine containing products I might add. Most people don’t ask, where does the nicotine come from in NRT? Well of course it comes from the plant, this is not made synthetically, it comes from the plant, so all the NRTs we have ever had."

Presenter: "That's the Nicotine Replacement Therapies"

Professor Bittoun: "These Nicotine Replacement Therapies, are a basis of nicotine coming from the tobacco plant which comes from the tobacco industry."

Presenter: "How ironic."

Professor Bittoun: "Always been the case only nobody stops to ask! But it certainly was a vehicle to help people stop smoking. Whether these e-cigarettes are a vehicle to help people stop smoking is still yet to be answered."

Presenter: "So the against group talk about e-cigarettes as a gateway back into legitimising the act of, and renormalizing the act of smoking. Is that what you think will happen?"

Professor Bittoun: "Well basically the concern is that your doctors could be doing it in their surgeries, smoking this product. Does it have any harmful effects on their patients sitting in the room with them? Probably not. So yeah, it is a serious dilemma."

========================================

And they call us crack-pots? A serious dilemma that they should kick back at what is quite possibly the best cessation method known because doctors may "smoke" these products in front of their patients? So some odd-ball stuff in the interview but some interesting stuff too. Looks like the professor had a little pop at vaping here too:
Global push to ban vaping - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Click Transcript to read the interview. These arguments will go on for years yet until good science shows clear trends in the health impacts of vaping. Until then the trolls and shouters on both sides of the fence will carry on doing what they do. Listen out for reasoned arguments and the support of good studies. The rest is a waste of time and we should not be dragged down to the level of name calling or getting involved in pointless arguments.

 

[knome]

I count 80 UK based vaping/e-cig vendors in the Discount code section of POTV. That's a small sample of working businesses that probably number thousands worldwide. How do they fit into an AstroTurf scenario?