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A new study published in the medical journal Cancer argues that electronic cigarettes do not work for the purpose of smoking cessation. The study focused in on cancer patients who continue smoking despite the diagnosis — most of who have already failed to quit countless times before.

The study was a fairly simple one. It followed more than a thousand cancer patients across 2012 and 2013 for a 6 month period — surveying them at the beginning and at the end. If one of the candidates had gone without cigarettes for the previous 7 days as of the second survey, that candidate was considered to have had a successful cessation attempt.

As is often the case, Boston University professor and regular e-cig advocate Michael Siegel has already hammered out a fairly succinct rundown of what’s wrong with this study. Most significantly, Siegel takes issue with the particular community the study chose to follow — cancer patient smokers, some of which had already tried to quit using electronic cigarettes. This is perhaps the single most resistant community to cessation and therefore any quitting whatsoever would be a surprise. The likelihood of a quit rate different enough to be of statistical significance would be almost impossible.

But there is another fairly major issue that this and other studies fail to address when it comes to dealing with smoking and smoking cessation. The study does not highlight the amount of smoking the candidates did from one survey to the next — even though it is a staple question in these types of studies. One of the promising aspects of electronic cigarettes is their ability to reduce harm by replacing any amount smoking a candidate would otherwise be doing without e-cigs.

While total cessation is an admirable goal, when looking at a group of highly resistant smokers, simply reducing the amount that they smoke can help tremendously. A study comparing e-cigs to the patch for the purposes of smoking cessation found that — although both had similar quit rates — e-cigs more often resulted in reduced total smoking for users even when that user didn’t quit.

In short, this study may possess valuable data within its pages, but the researchers seem far too focused on making e-cigs look bad.