There will always be deep dark secret alcoves where one can have a smoke.

I get not smoking in restaurants. I'm not there to smoke I'm there to have a meal. So a place, even a bar, with a smoking code is perfectly understandable.

However, I've always felt that each owner of each establishment should make their own call. You can't be around smoke? I apologize, you might not like it here. Whereas the person who offers a smoke-free environment will be patronized by those who like that idea. Something about free enterprise, or something.

Think of all the money spent on legislation to make us healthy. Why, I bet: see Post 3

We had the same thing happen in Savannah, everyone has just gone outside to smoke. If you think it make people stop smoking you will be sorely disappointed.

But it doesn't get cold in Savannah.

Stopped lots of people here....... (yes, it is cold outside) although most I know said the price was a main factor and the ban was the icing on the cake.

Maybe Merc is just popping his head in the sand a little. No ban on that, yet.

Well....... the Savannah City Council just outlawed smoking in all Bars.......

So no, I don't have my head in the sand....

I support it. My wife and I hate going out and coming home stinking like cigs...

In some places, esp in the winter, it is unbearable. So we just do not go.

um, the head in the sand would be about the results, not the bans.... and your support or not is irrelevant....

On the medical research ...
What usually happens when a new field opens up is that dozens of individuals (or teams, usually) publish papers on a topic, review each other, repeat each others experiments, publish, develop further et cetera. After a decade or two, someone does a survey article, collecting, comparing and summarising what has been found and repeatedly tested and survived the scrutiny. This is about the best kind of source there is, scientifically. The findings of this article will be the backbone of the next generation of textbooks.

So the message I take from this finding is a reminder not to get too excited about one, or even a couple of articles with a new finding. Anything less than 3 yeas old is insufficiently tested, anything more than 10 is probably out of date.

Oh and did anyone notice, if this is medical research and 90% of medical research is wrong, there is a 90% chance this guy is wrong?

Also Zen, I think the gist of this article is really about whether or not
the meta-researchers are correct when they try to assess the "quality"
of the individual studies being used in the meta-study, and they find that they can not.

It's not really about 90% of all medical research being wrong.
It's about evaluating "odds ratios".