eWizzard wrote5 people is far from being a representative sample of the population. Multiply that by 10,000 and then it'll have some relevance. Until then, I think I'll take Wikipedia as a more reliable source regarding this, thank you very much.
Just real experience, Wikipedia will be declined in court, but this 5 people will be not, if it is part of official or professional study.
eWizzard wrote...Are you doing this on purpose?
I didn't criticize the papers. What I said, and what you obviously ignored for some reason, is that correlation does not imply causation.
Look, I'm going to spoon-feed it to you. The following statements:
People can stop smoking because they have higher IQ...
People are less intelligent because they smoke...
People smoke because they're not intelligent...
Have not been proven in any of the papers that you and I have posted, because they are correlational studies. This is not saying that they're bad studies, but rather by their nature they can neither prove nor disprove hypotheses, and most importantly they do not provide definitive explanations for why the results are so.
Question. Did study shows that people who quit smoking had higher IQ? YES. Did study shows that smokers average IQ is lower than total average - YES. So what else you need? :)
There is no sources referenced, as i told i suspect this data supplied by single person who are involved in tobacco control program in Lebanon, with total funding $30000/year. I found more credible studies, AUB and etc, and referenced them, numbers there more precise, detailed and most important - lower.
And anyway this 35% are already partially isolated. I know well habits of smokers, for example for them very tempting to smoke after good lunch. Now they can't do this at restaurant, so or they will develop good habits, or they will have to accept they are outcasts of society in some matters.
Again, some people using smoking as inspiration, they control the process and can quit whenever they want, and mostly they smoke the way it wont hurt anyone. Thats their choice then, it doesn't make any trouble for others, so it is OK. Well, except if they smoke indoors - their rooms usually have awfully permanent bad smell.
Btw now also i notice we have some people in office(not Lebanese one) who are heavy smokers, when i have urgent question and often i come to them - i see they are absent, because they are smoking outside. Also we had few very bad examples, when we worked with high profile issues, where is required very high level of discipline and strict etiquette, smokers failed, because when they are not smoking long time, they start to think about smoking more and more, they can't concentrate well (as all addicts), and eventually it leads that they will do mistake and failure of whole team.
I can see it is enough important to consider heavy smokers will have significantly more bad performance at work in some, if not most cases. Sure HR will not say that to them directly, but it can be reason to decline application.
Once more again smokers addiction are isolating then from society this way also.
