Media Horror! UK Tabloid Press and Hack Researcher Create Anti-Vaping Frenzy

An incomplete, unpublished study by a cardiac rehabilitation lecturer at a British university has become the latest fuel for a growing vaping moral panic in the United Kingdom. The study would be unknown if not for sensationalist tabloid newspaper coverage encouraged by the researcher.

“Vaping Horror!” says the headline

The study was first publicized in a Feb. 23 story by reporter Matt Roper in the English tabloid the Daily Mirror. The article carried the headline, “Exclusive: Vaping horror as first ever study reveals deadly side effects - heart disease, organ failure, dementia.” 

Roper describes the research by Dr. Maxime Boidin of Manchester Metropolitan University as a “bombshell,” even though the study has not even been completed, and nothing from it has been peer-reviewed or published. Boidin claims that “the dangers for someone who keeps vaping are no different from smokers.”

After the Daily Mirror story was published, the floodgates opened, and dozens of news outlets in the UK and other countries .ran their own stories about the Boidin research—most with the same lack of skepticism the Daily Mirror employed.

The research has not been peer-reviewed or published

“We joined the study in its final weeks,” wrote the breathless Daily Mirror reporter, “and saw that smokers and vapers achieved a flat reading, signalling damaged artery walls that can no longer dilate—an almost certain sign of future serious cardiovascular problems. Further tests proved that the blood flow in smokers and vapers is similarly impaired, making them at risk of developing cognitive dysfunction, including dementia.”

But reduced blood flow immediately after nicotine use doesn’t necessarily indicate a risk of “future serious cardiovascular problems” or current arterial damage, and in young people it almost certainly doesn’t. It takes years, and probably decades, for smoking to significantly damage arterial walls, and there is no evidence vaping will cause the same kind of damage, since it contains none of the combustion products that are the major causes of atherosclerosis in smokers. According to the Daily Mirror, Boidin’s study subjects have an average age of 27, and none are older than 45.

However, all nicotine use causes an immediate (and temporary) “stiffening” of arteries. The research described in the article appears to measure this transient effect of nicotine—not long-term damage as claimed. Boidin did not apparently study his research subjects’ arteries, aside from measuring the short-term arterial blood-flow effects with a simple flow-mediated dilation test (using a blood pressure cuff-like apparatus). Such a test cannot show “damage.”

No doctor engaged in cautious, precise research would claim that these temporary effects—which can also be caused by caffeine and exercise, among other things—prove the existence of arterial damage. But Boidin does exactly that, and attributes the damage to “inflammation caused by nicotine, as well as the metals and chemicals found in vapes.” 

Did Boidin study whether vapers showed high levels of dangerous metals (most of which occur in tiny amounts in e-liquids) in their bodies? If so, it’s the only research he didn’t discuss with the Daily Mirror reporter.

Additionally, the study apparently made no effort to exclude former smokers—an unforgivable error when comparing vapers to smokers and people who have never vaped or smoked. 

In his story on the study, Planet of the Vapes reporter Dave Cross dug up a 2023 university press release announcing the study. It describes the planned study cohort as "20 vapers, 20 cigarette smokers, and a control group of 20 individuals" who don't vape or smoke. We don't know if the study was later expanded, but if not, a group that size—no matter what terrible effects are discovered—is not large enough to base serious conclusions about the health risks of vaping. 

Since Dr. Boidin has not published details of the study, experts in the field have no basis to judge whether it contributes to the knowledge base, or is just more junk science intended to make its author famous. Since Boidin decided to release his conclusions to a tabloid newspaper before submitting them to peer review, the latter judgment appears most likely.

Experts denounce both researcher and press coverage

Public health advocate and former director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK) Clive Bates addressed the study in a letter to Dr. Boidin and his university’s head of governance, asking Boidin to “stop the irresponsible promotion of your incomplete vaping study and follow a credible scientific process for releasing its findings.”

“You have not published the study, and from the reporting, it seems you have not even completed it,” wrote Bates. “There is no published paper, pre-print, protocol, trial registration, or even conference abstract. There is no information on the participants, how they were selected and their smoking history. Nor have you disclosed competing interests or funding information. Yet, you are making alarming statements to the media about the findings of a study no one else has seen. It is unethical and unacceptable to conduct science in this way.”

Tom Chivers, science writer and host of the popular podcast The Studies Show, denounced the press coverage as “a public health disaster.”

Dr. Michael Siegel, a doctor and tobacco control critic, reported in his blog that the Boidin research appears connected to another study conducted at Manchester Metropolitan University that was presented at the 2024 European Respiratory Congress annual meeting. The previous MMU study measured exercise capacity and respiratory function in young vapers and smokers, and also concluded that, regarding those metrics, “vaping is no better than smoking."

That study has also apparently not yet been published.