Tuesday 20 September 2011

Smoking In Films Fun

From the BBC:

Teenagers who watch films showing actors smoking are more likely to take it up, new UK research suggests...

Fair enough, that's a hypothesis which might or might not be true.

... The latest research, published in the journal Thorax, looked at the potential influence of some of the 360 top US box office films released between 2001 and 2005, including movies like Spider-Man, Bridget Jones and The Matrix, that depict smoking.

Adolescents who saw the most films depicting smoking were 73% more likely to have tried a cigarette than those exposed to the least. And they were 50% more likely to be a current smoker.


Wot? WTF?

Most people watch lots of different films, on the telly, on DVD, at friend's houses, in the cinema. Most people have seen a cross section of all manner of films, a few of which show somebody smoking and most of which don't. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't be able to remember the names of most of the films they'd seen in the past year (if you include ones you watched on the telly).

It is surely inconceivable that some people deliberately select films in which people smoke, and it seems statistically unlikely that out of a hundred films we watch each year, that some people would see mainly smoking films and others would see none.

So the only way to makes sense of that last paragraph is to assume that people who "watch the most films" also tend to smoke, full stop. In other words, people who enjoy the relaxation, escapism of films are also quite likely to enjoy the relaxation, escapism of smoking. By contrast, people who like going jogging are probably least likely to smoke.

8 comments:

A K Haart said...

I agree – this looks like dodgy number-fudging to me.

Watching films is a sedentary occupation as is smoking, reading, listening to music and blogging so there may be correlations. Doesn’t prove causation.

Anonymous said...

I suspect the questionnaire had just two questions:

1. Have you ever smoked, Y/N?

2. Do you watch films, Y/N?

Pogo said...

"Never let confounding factors get in the way of a predefined conclusion".

Mark said...

These people are complete loons and will not be satisfied with anything less than complete prohibition.
I understand that many old cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Popeye have been re-edited to remove the smoking scenes.
I wonder how they explain the fact that even Tee-total non-smokers eventually die?

View from the Solent said...

"I wonder how they explain the fact that even Tee-total non-smokers eventually die?"

Too much salt/fat/meat/etc.etc.*

* Select woo-of-the-week as appropriate

QP said...

If you're really keen I found the paper here:
http://thorax.bmj.com/content/66/10/866.full.pdf?sid=9e7bac57-ce6d-4bde-8ae6-6cc88f8ca214
At first glance does appear exposure was taken into account. However exposure to smoking in films appears to sit within a fair more fundamental correlation between smoking and degree of parental restriction. You may be even more dismayed to hear that there is an established scheme dedicated to the classification and quantification of smoking portrayal in the media. :-)

Bayard said...

Mark, come on, you know that, as far as these people are concerned, correlation = causality every time.

Anonymous said...

as far as these people are concerned

these people being the Daily Mail, obviously. The study itself did not make that link. Of course we know where the money came from and we know the ultimate aim of these types of research - but the most the authors said is that their results "lend support" to calls for increasing the parental guidance ratings.