NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

5/16/2026 at 6:04:47 AM

Ironically, this article is guilty of the same thing it rails against.

No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products. An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC was picked apart instead. The clear implication is that THC vapes were unjustly targeted and readers should assume the contrary of the dishonest NYT article. i.e. That THC vapes are safe. Yet, no direct evidence of that is provided. A possibly fatal lie is told purely with true facts.

Here's why that matters: THC is a recreational product. It's relatively recent legalization in only some jurisdictions is why we're just starting to get good data on it. Vaping is even newer and less well studied.

Okay, so let's say there's no clear evidence that THC vapes are harmful. I'm being a dishonest fear-monger. Or am I?

What should be the default position on recreational drugs? Specifically, ones that are inhaled? Ask a respirologist. Lungs are delicate and, if you screw yours up, you're really fubar'd. They'll tell you that, if you do want to use a relatively unstudied recreational drug, eat it or shove it up your ass. (Seriously, THC enemas are a thing.) Don't put it in your lungs.

The default position for inhaling drugs should be, "Don't" until they're proven safe. This is my opinion/bias/dishonest-agenda.

by beloch

5/16/2026 at 6:40:05 AM

The article explicitly and repeatedly affirms that illegal THC vapes are dangerous because of Vitamin E Acetate, which is used as a thickener agent. TFA points out how the NYT article carefully weasels its way around admitting that the THC vaping was the cause of the teenager's lung injury - the NYT is attempting to get the audience to associate the harm with legal nicotine vapes.

Does that make more sense to you now?

by aoeusnth1

5/16/2026 at 6:31:49 AM

You read the gwern article very incorrectly. It was pointing out that Lizzie's injuries were caused by _adulterated_ illegal THC vapes. While the NYT article was using weasel writing techniques to mislead readers into the conclusion the that legal flavored nicotine vapes are dangerous.

by bityard

5/17/2026 at 5:17:10 PM

The OP may have read the article incorrectly but it engages in the same lying by saying the truth that the NYT article it claims engaged in because many people would read it that way.

Unlike the author I’m not claiming that they did it deliberately, but that’s what their article ends up doing.

by adjejmxbdjdn

5/16/2026 at 6:34:46 AM

> No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products.

That's not the point - gwerns article dismantled the NYT article. If one read (or heard about) the NYT article and used it as "proof" of "vaping is bad", gwern is saying: "not so fast". That's not to say "vaping is healthy", nor even "vaping is not unhealthy" - just that this article isn't the proof you're looking for. Vaping (legal flavoured nicotine (which is what's on trial)) could be horrible - simply citing instances of why this is so isn't actually done in the article.

If it matters, I'm not condoning vaping or smoking at all.

by bch

5/16/2026 at 8:42:25 AM

no. the critique has nothing to do with vaping. It picks apart nicotine vapes vs the THC specific, vitamin E specific illegally marketed/unapproved incident.

The NYT article was suppose to be about nicotine vapes and in it, they used an example that only appears related because it's a vape. The harm caused by the illegally marketed/unapproved incidence doesn't prove the new york times summary: nicotine vapes are harmful.

The fact presented about the THC vape incidences arn't categorically related to the use and marketing of nicotine vapes.

The point of the article is to showcase how examples can be technically correct (vaping superset) but not actually provide relevance (THC vapes w/vitamin E acetate caused lung damage).

by cyanydeez

5/16/2026 at 6:08:04 AM

In general for me, the default position for recreational activities should be “okay” until they’re proven dangerous to others.

Wanna jump out of an airplane with no parachute and see if one of your buddies can strap one on you before you hit the ground? Totally fine with me.

Wanna base-jump off a skyscraper in NYC with a wing-suit ? Fuck off. You’ll probably hurt someone else who didn’t sign up for that.

That said, I’d also like the CPSC to look into whether products like this are safe and hold manufacturers accountable for their consequences.

I’d also very much appreciate it if the FTC and FDA actually did thorough random testing of drugs and supplements (recreational or therapeutic) to ensure that the actual ingredients and doses match the label. The FDA requires drug manufacturers to be in compliance, but doesn’t actually test drugs themselves, they mostly just look over paperwork to see if the processes followed would probably produce the correct product and assume the paperwork isn’t manipulated.

In fact, the FDA actively works to prevent people, even the Pentagon, from doing independent 3rd party drug testing of common pharmaceuticals [0]

0: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-12-05/pentagon-... / https://archive.is/eyWSn

by nerdsniper

5/16/2026 at 9:53:20 AM

>Wanna jump out of an airplane with no parachute and see if one of your buddies can strap one on you before you hit the ground? Totally fine with me.

>Wanna base-jump off a skyscraper in NYC with a wing-suit ? Fuck off. You’ll probably hurt someone else who didn’t sign up for that.

Are they not the same?

Also the aeroplane itself is a highly regulated piece of this system

by marysol5

5/16/2026 at 7:14:25 PM

Not the same. One is generally over very sparsely populated land. The other is in between manhattan skyscrapers.

Also the first example (jumping out of plane with no parachute at all) is perfectly legal.

by nerdsniper

5/17/2026 at 12:31:11 AM

So who decides the threshold of public risk that is appropriate?

by c22

5/16/2026 at 6:17:22 AM

> An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC

This was an NYT article clearly biased against nicotine. One of us is confused here. Maybe I can't follow your particular idiom.

by card_zero

5/16/2026 at 12:51:53 PM

Neither of two articles is about THC. The blog article is analyzing a NYC article that attacks nicotine vapes (and using the case of THC vapes related deaths in 2019 as one of the arguments against nicotine vapes).

by pandaman

5/17/2026 at 9:43:59 PM

You don't need to prove the opposite of someone's claim to argue their evidence fails to demonstrate their claim is true.

by jjk166

5/17/2026 at 2:32:51 AM

In the economy pen market, it's anyone's guess to what part of the plant (shake/trim/flower) was used for the process and if it was flushed correctly. Those labels that show the growth additives and nutrients get pretty lengthy.

by The_President

5/16/2026 at 6:42:58 AM

Respectfully, I don't agree at all. I didn't read the OP article and think they were defending the safety of any kind of vaping. What they credibly point out is the deliberate conflation of nicotine and THC vaping. The NYT article repeatedly suggests that the hospitalization of people vaping was from "nicotine and THC" when the specific lung damage reported was from illicit THC products specifically.

by unethical_ban

5/16/2026 at 8:55:46 AM

you missed the critique entirely. The critique isn't "THC vaping is safe to the contrary" or "Nicotine vaping is fine".

The critique is: "This article uses a rhetorical device (THC vapes with vitamin E acetate are harmful) to suggest that nicotine vapes are harmful, when there's nothing in common other than being a vape product"

It's goal isn't to refute the evidence, but to suggest the editors and writers of the articles did not provide a sufficient connection between the THC-vape incidents and the harm caused by nicotine vapes, yet spent the entire article convolution any distinctions between the two, to implicate nicotine vaping as equally harmful as the THC infused vitamin-e lung damage incidents.

Had the writers & editors at the NYT had any nicotine vape related direct harm, that would have connected the THC-vape incidences. But just writing this sentence, you can see how continually repeating THC-vape incidences biases you to understanding that there's a difference.

And that's the point, NYT article went out of it's way to convolute direct harm incidences to a broader vaping category when there's no evidence to suggest nicotine vaping is susceptable to the same direct harm. It's like saying bob drove his car drunk & crashed, therefore, driving cars is dangerous. We know it's dangerous but the "driving drunk" doesn't prove they're dangerous. You can do lots of dangerous things while drunk.

Similarly, THC-infused vitamin E acetate in vapes caused lung damage. Is the operable cause the Vape or the THC-infused vitamin E acetate; no evidence is presented that it's anything other than the vape liquid by all other sources. That is to say, no evidence by NYT is presented that some other substance in a vape is equally harmful.

If you want to get into the science, go ahead, a vape is vaporizing things. So it matters what those things it's vaporizing is. And if it's incomplete vaporization, then it's possible harmful chemicals are being generated. So perhaps the article needed to present the basic facts about vapes.

by cyanydeez

5/16/2026 at 1:24:34 PM

> That is to say, no evidence by NYT is presented that some other substance in a vape is equally harmful.

> So perhaps the article needed to present the basic facts about vapes.

The whole last third of the NYT article is about how we don't (or did not at the time) know what substances may be at play, with several specific agents called out.

by bonsai_spool

5/17/2026 at 4:47:56 AM

My response was slightly different: Take any article, any writeup, on any topic, and go through it in fine enough detail and you can nitpick it to pieces. This was just someone engaging in their hobby. I stopped reading after a paragraph or two.

by pseudohadamard

5/16/2026 at 8:05:58 AM

> The default position for inhaling drugs should be, "Don't" until they're proven safe. This is my opinion/bias/dishonest-agenda.

Ideally don't inhale anything that's not fairly clean air.

by ErroneousBosh

5/16/2026 at 4:55:30 AM

This doesn't surprise me.

I grew up reading NYTimes on the weekend with my parents. I held them in extreme high regard when it came to their news and journalistic integrity. Over the years, I've shifted to think of them as another data point. For the industries that I'm most familiar with (Tech, Finance, and Pharma), I find their reporting often shallow, lacking in nuance, or intentional/unintentional misreporting. And I often wonder if their reporting of other areas is similarly lacking.

Now, they are just another data point, which is sad.

by Calvin02

5/16/2026 at 7:32:34 AM

Same story with me. To be clear, I am a subscriber, though I tend to hold out for the ultra-cheap last ditch retention deals they through at you. But I take them with a grain of salt these days. They have a narrative like anywhere else, and they don't let the full facts get in its way.

Michael Crichton said it best:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

by sho

5/16/2026 at 8:10:21 AM

The NYT (and Judith Miller) was one of the most shameless shills of the Iraq War, laundering complete bullshit and lies. It’s not completely bad, there have been outstanding individuals, and the election coverage is still the best imo, but there is no reason to believe the organization has higher integrity than the rest of the MSM.

by pram

5/16/2026 at 12:33:20 PM

> The NYT (and Judith Miller) was one of the most shameless shills of the Iraq War, laundering complete bullshit and lies. It’s not completely bad, there have been outstanding individuals, and the election coverage is still the best imo, but there is no reason to believe the organization has higher integrity than the rest of the MSM.

Very respectfully, as pre-teen at the time, I recognized that there was no real reason for going from 9/11 to Afghanistan or Iraq... based on my then daily reading of NYT. And I am sure there were opinion articles in that same paper that said we were rushing towards something that demanded deeper reflection.

Fundamentally, I don't think the job of a newspaper is to think for us.

All the absurdities of that time were, in fact, news. What wasn't present at the time was a link to justify the inane war we began. And that link is still absent, which we are all collectively realizing.

by bonsai_spool

5/16/2026 at 3:03:40 PM

the General Wesley Clark 7: https://youtu.be/Eo6u9DpASp8?t=69

"7 countries in 5 years; Iraq Syria Lebanon Libya Somalia Sudan and finishing off with Iran"

well here we are 25 years later finally getting around to that last one...

by genewitch

5/17/2026 at 8:29:18 AM

> based on my then daily reading of NYT

and if you’d only read the first headlines on the frontpage during that time?

or…less?

Like the majority of voters?

by DANmode

5/18/2026 at 3:09:28 AM

> Like the majority of voters?

I wasn't voting as a 12 year-old!

> and if you’d only read the first headlines on the frontpage during that time?

But I was reading the entirety of the articles :-)

by bonsai_spool

5/18/2026 at 4:26:15 AM

But nobody else was, unfortunately.

My point was: that’s how they get away with manufactured consent.

Technically they reported on every nuance: but on page G8 lol

by DANmode

5/16/2026 at 5:59:55 AM

Honestly, they have never been particularly trustworthy. People go on about the "newspaper of record" title, but as far as I can see, those are mainly handed out on the basis of age, not actual quality and journalistic integrity.

by Pay08

5/17/2026 at 2:20:48 PM

I don’t know if the authors framing that the comments got duped is exactly right. I think most of the comments are upset that kids are addicted to vaping nicotine which is definitely true.

also, the first reader comment literally says:

“Vaping hasn’t been shown to be unsafe scientifically“

by kart23

5/16/2026 at 9:08:08 AM

So one thing that always strikes me about vaping is that we ignore the metal heater. It’ a coil of metal that glows, during which it will boil off metal atoms. After a while it has lost so much material that is breaks and needs to be replaced. That metal went into your lungs.

by CamelCaseCondo

5/16/2026 at 12:09:05 PM

Does the heater really break by becoming so thin that it mechanically disconnects? I don’t use a vape but from coil replacement guides it sounds like people replace the coil because it begins to taste bad due to the burned stuff sticking to it.

Probably not much more healthy but I don’t really see how you would be ingesting much more metal from that compared to your metal frying pan for example.

by echoangle

5/16/2026 at 2:33:38 PM

Disposable vapes don't have this issue. <-period. you throw the pod away before any sort of degradation to the coil and the wick. That being said...

The coil becomes brittle from interacting with the liquid and usually breaks contact when refilling or if dropped. what actually happens is the wick goes bad or burns, and won't "wet" the coil anymore; or you use an e-liquid/e-juice with a lot of sweeteners and the coil gets caked with burnt sweetener and can't fire anymore.

But that's if you're negligent with a DIY or "hand wound" or "drip" vape, where you're using the same coil for a very long time (weeks, depending), and it depends on the liquid, the liquids that taste/smell like bakery/confections absolutely cover coils with gunk that you have to remove the wadding (usually cotton or silicone wicking material, unbleached), and do a dry-fire to burn all the junk off. This smells awful and i usually did it by hanging the thing out a car window and firing it just so i didn't have to smell it. I personally used specialty "wire" that's real thin wire that's twisted to make it thicker, both to make it handle more heat (lower resistance means more voltage can be put in) and last longer, due to less heat stress. 90% of the time when a coil broke for me, it broke where the coil connects to the leg that goes to the terminal block, and rarely the leg would snap at the terminal block instead of the coil, and maybe 2 times the coil broke somewhere along the length. in a little over a decade of use of "rebuildable drip atomizers."

The disposable and pod-based vapes don't have any of these issues because say 9000-18000 "puffs" of 0.5s or longer and you're supposed to dispose of it. With one of the RJR or PMJ vape brands, they're not refillable, so you just throw the pod away; with the "bar" vapes, you throw the whole bar, battery and all, in the trash.

I really advocate for the "refillable pod" and "drip" or "drip tank" vapes, just from an ecological standpoint. Uwell, VodPod(stylized and possibly spelled 'voopoo') make decent pod-based ones, where the device, a pack of 2 pods, and a bottle of e-liquid to fill it with cost about the same as a Vuze device and a 6-pack of pods for the Vuze. And if you're a "heavy user" a 6 pack is < 1 week of vaping; so hands down doing it with your own device and liquid is cheaper, for sure. additionally there's a difference between "mouth to lung" and "Direct to lung" vape devices/pods. MTL is like a cigarette, you draw into your mouth, then inhale into your lungs. DTL is like a hookah or bong, you "breathe" in through the device. I used to prefer DTL but i use MTL now. the vuze and other tiny pod disposable vapes are Mouth to Lung devices.

TL;dr: No. Generally the disposable ones from the two big tobacco companies are "safe" given the GP and your queries. the "bar" ones, like "elf bar" or whatever, i am not sure. There's been QC issues and other reported problems with that type, but they're generally <18000 "puffs" and that, in my opinion that borders on being "dumb". The big vapes you see people using? those are probably safer than even the RJR/PMJ ones, unless the tank is metal. Then you can't be sure, that's up to the user!

Note: the closest thing to vaping prior to vaping was a hookah vis-à-vis nicotine, and a nebulizer, vis-à-vis vaporizing "drugs." They even make things that vaporize marijuana, straight from a grinder, these days. But heating something to create a vapor to inhale isn't "new"!

In fact, the first "e-cig" i ever saw was used by a friend in 2009 or so, and he said it was sold as an "Portable Electronic Hookah". It was a DTL device, with a tank and replaceable wick/coil "cartridge". Most DTL are "replaceable cartridge coil/wick" tanks, and most MTL are "pods"

by genewitch

5/16/2026 at 12:29:01 PM

What are you on about? Your premise is pure bunk. The metal doesn't glow in normal usage. Speaking from experience: if that happens, it's a terribly painful experience and nobody would enjoy it. Vape coils usually heat to under 205°C/400°F, enough to transform the liquid into vapor but far below the glow point of the metal alloy typically used (kanthal/FeCrAl or nichrome/NiCr). Replacement is necessary due to residue buildup from the liquid, not because the metal has become degraded.

by static_motion

5/16/2026 at 1:05:00 PM

That's correct, in normal use the coil (the term used for the metal) never glows, it's not even close to glow. This is because it is surrounded by cotton soaked in the liquid which always cools the coil and which produces the desired vapor. If the coil would ever start to glow this is called a "dry hit" and it usually happens if you failed to monitor there's enough liquid in the tank. In this case the cotton immediately starts to burn and believe me inhaling that is disgusting and you would immediately stop. In fact you even stop before that because if the cotton gets dry it stops tasting any good.

Vaping is (compared to actually smoking tabacco) definitely harm reduction and significantly less harmful (which doesn't mean its healthy and you should do it). Yet it is treated like smoking cigarettes by law. For example in Germany you have to pay tabacco tax on the base liquid (which doesn't even contain nicotine) if it is intended to be used in a vape (17 cents per milliliter) which increased the price of the base liquid from around 10€ to 170€. But the base liquid only consists of two things (propylene glycol and glycerol) and both those substances you can by cheaply in a vet doctors online shop for maybe 5€ each liter. It's ridiculous.

by trixn

5/16/2026 at 1:19:09 PM

That’s a pretty ridiculous tax for something that is far safer than smoking, I pay $20/100ml of juice in the US.

by quickthrowman

5/16/2026 at 2:54:38 PM

When i made my own i could make 500-700ml for $20. The expense is all up-front if you don't know what flavors you want or you want to experiment with recipes - the flavoring is relatively expensive if you want a lot of variety. If you're a "cherry cola" or "golden tobacco" sort, then the up front cost is about $40 (or was, 6 years ago), and you can make over a gallon of liquid at a strength of ~2.5% (25mg/l) off a single purchase of everything. you need 2 liters of PG, 1 liter of VG, and 1 liter of 100ml/l nicotine. then your flavoring.

anyhow, i buy juice now, too, but mine was better. I never used sweeteners. My current go-to is Naked Euro Gold 12mg, but i am on the hunt for a 25ml nicotine salt version of a similar flavor. (nicotine salt vs freebase nicotine, salt is more "mellow" and lets you put a higher concentration in, which translates directly to less use, as you're satiated much faster.)

by genewitch

5/16/2026 at 9:54:02 AM

Got a source on that one?

by marysol5

5/16/2026 at 2:58:38 PM

they do not. Even hair dryer coils don't generally glow, and the old vapes used the same wires, at sub-1% of the wattage. 5-8W instead of 800-1500W. That wire was called "Kanthal", and for a while vapes went to nichrome and titanium and various other things. I am unsure what the "gold standard" is now, but i doubt it's still kanthal unless it's a cheap chinese vape "bar".

anyhow, as other people and myself said already, the metal never gets hot enough to incandesce, not even remotely close!

by genewitch

5/16/2026 at 1:10:49 PM

You do understand it’s a resistive heating element just like an electric baseboard heater or space heater? There’s no “metal atoms boiling off”, a typical alloy used for vape coils is Kanthal, which is iron/chromium/nickel which melts at 2,500F

You are not heating up the atomizer anywhere near that temperature with (2) 18650 cells. Coils are replaced when the cotton that surrounds them gets dirty and the vapor starts tasting bad.

by quickthrowman

5/16/2026 at 4:01:40 AM

The problem with gwern posts is that there are so rarely anything to nitpick, to spark conversation in the comments.

by cwillu

5/16/2026 at 6:30:45 AM

Apparently, a lot of people blame his nicotine article for getting addicted to nicotine.

by olalonde

5/16/2026 at 7:43:54 AM

There is plenty of stuff to nitpick but it's the kind of thing that internet commenters who read his articles dismiss as poorly reasoned because it involves indirect social impact and presentation rather than content.

by saagarjha

5/16/2026 at 6:07:42 AM

I'm unclear on the NYT motivation. "Let's pin it on the nicotine vapes," why? Scare stories sell papers, I guess.

by card_zero

5/16/2026 at 7:52:04 PM

On the surface level there were some political initiatives by various parties to regulate vapes more strictly at the time.

On a deeper level you have several interested parties (vaping companies, tobacco companies, public health interests that get funding for whatever reasons) that stand to lose or gain alot of money depending on how it's regulated.

Or you you might even have politicians looking for donations from the people that are selling vapes or more likely, politicians that are seeing a potential new tax revenue source and our feeling out the level of opposition or support for it.

I don't think the NYTs goes for scare stories for the most part.

by paleotrope

5/16/2026 at 5:15:44 AM

A very well-done read through of the article. Another top-notch work from Gwern[0]. I've found that this kind of sophistry is quite common in some circles. For instance, for things for which you want funding to be cut "only x% of the money went to y" while for things for which you want funding to not be cut "the things the money goes to include a, b, and c". The "include a, b, and c" is true but perhaps not informative. There are quite a few of these ways to make weasel arguments where each sentence is true, and the reasoning is nonetheless fallacious or motivated.

I've been trying to find a place where people write down these tricks so that I can at least name and classify them for myself. There's one that particularly gets me, a kind of false aggregation. Say breast cancer is 99% treatable and costs $1m and prostate cancer is 1% treatable and the most you'd spend is $1k. Suppose someone said "cancers can be as bad as 1% treatable while attempts can be up to $1m to do". Well, that makes it sound like there's a cancer where you spend a mil and it's 1%. This kind of false aggregation obscures the truth.

It would be useful to me so I can concisely name this kind of thing and then work with it to preserve epistemic hygiene.

0: The distinctively beautiful website is brand enough haha

by arjie

5/16/2026 at 4:55:10 AM

nearly all the value in a news article comes from the collation of facts needed to formulate it.

i would much rather read this collation directly, give me bullet points. in such a structured format it would also be easier to analyze if a given statement is too specific or has too many qualifiers. it would also be easier to notice what's missing.

by teravor

5/16/2026 at 4:06:29 AM

I vaped for a couple months but stopped when I started to have my heart race when I would stand up suddenly. Ears started to crackle as well. Not saying the article is wrong, but I think there are probably good reasons to chose alternatives...

by slopinthebag

5/16/2026 at 5:37:22 AM

> Not saying the article is wrong, but I think there are probably good reasons to chose alternatives...

This concern is addressed in the article.

> it would be possible to write this story without bringing in irrelevant THC-contaminated anecdotes or EVALI, by focusing on legitimate criticisms of nicotine vaping. (You could discuss teen access, flavor marketing, age checks, FDA jurisdiction, statutory drafting, the economics of disposable devices, and the adult harm-reduction case without ever mentioning EVALI which you know is not related to teen access to legal anything.)

by loeg

5/16/2026 at 6:41:35 AM

I don't see how any of that is relevant to what I said.

If you need nic, snus is by far the best for you.

by slopinthebag

5/16/2026 at 8:21:23 AM

You're discussing legitimate criticisms of nicotine vaping; the article isn't opposed to that, it just explicitly isn't a focus.

by loeg

5/16/2026 at 3:01:24 AM

I sure am glad such deception is limited to that one vaping article.

by like_any_other

5/16/2026 at 3:18:18 AM

Some people might not realize there's a /s in there.

by YZF

5/16/2026 at 4:12:51 AM

I’m disappointed this is the first comment on this post.

gwern’s writing (including on nicotine) was formative for me; it showed me how and why the internet the was important: it let me read good, well written thinking I had never seen from the NYTs or my parents.

I first saw a link to gwern.net on HN. And I trusted the NYTs as an institution then, and do to this day… and I’m sure I clicked through, and took the gwern post seriously in part because comments weren’t universally negative.

You can point to bounded trust problems, or talk more about how “The Media Very Rarely Lies”…

But please don’t take up the first comment on a gwern post to cheap shot the NYTs

by zrezzed

5/16/2026 at 5:07:51 AM

Meh. Writing like this was formative for me (before Gwern; I'm old), but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else. It just manifests in a different way?

It boils down to an obvious disparity in the standard of proof they demand for "pet" topics versus what they need for everything else. You can do this kind of ultra-nitpicky "rational inquiry" to undermine anything you don't like. You can use it to argue against seatbelts. Or against the ban on lead paint. Was lead paint really all that bad?... and I mean, really? Are there studies? Are they high quality enough?... Double-blind? Confounding factors? Correlation or causation? Even if they look solid, I bet they contain enough errors to cast doubt. Cui bono? What was the role of the titanium dioxide lobby in all this?

For nicotine specifically, I've been around enough people seriously addicted to nicotine to just roll my eyes at this stuff. I had things thrown at me by a visibly jittery relative when I refused to smuggle cigarettes into a hospital. Do I have a published double-blind study showing that it's worse than coffee? No. But again, neither do rationalists for 99% of the stuff they believe in.

Do I think that vapes are a noteworthy problem to be focusing on? Maybe not, but public policy is always to some extent vibe-based. And the harm of being too heavy-handed on vapes is really not something that keeps me up at night.

by lacewing

5/16/2026 at 6:03:23 AM

They insinuated that the ordinary vapes caused serious lung injury. The blame lay elsewhere, but you think it's fine to shift it around to your preferred target.

by card_zero

5/16/2026 at 6:31:14 AM

No. I was answering to parent's broader comment about "formative" writings on nicotine. And I was making my own broader point that the NYT piece is biased, but selective evidence-seeking in the rationalist community doesn't deserve any special praise.

by lacewing

5/16/2026 at 6:01:33 AM

> Meh. Writing like this was formative for me (before Gwern; I'm old), but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else. It just manifests in a different way?

Could you point out to some examples? Is there any "rational inquiry" that shows a worldview bias from the rationalists, in your opinion?

I agree that the broader smarty-pants community may have this issue, just curious to read your examples.

I think this nicely pointed out in "The Big Bang Theory", where Sheldon Cooper says something like "If I would be wrong, don't you think I would know about it?" That sounds like something Elmo M would say with a serious face.

by moravak1984

5/16/2026 at 8:00:00 AM

Rationalists are not necessarily better at thinking than you are, they're just usually better cited. That isn't to say there isn't value in being able to cite your beliefs, but if you try very hard you can find data that justifies just about anything, omit nontrivial externalities, and expect any arbitrarily high standard of evidence because that is what you need to think well and good, when in fact they just spend more time being comfortable with conversations that involve p-values and metacognition than you are and will seek to draw you onto their home turf for that discussion.

In this case, for example, I doubt that Gwern is seeking to mislead, but I have heard (hearsay, I know) that there are people who read this, start vaping, and legitimately end up with nicotine additions from much worse stuff. Sure, there's nothing false said here, but you can definitely say only true things about vapes and neglect to mention that your readers of this have ended up more likely to die of lung cancer than they might have had you not published this. I think someone who was truly rationalist would find that in itself an interesting topic of conversation but it seems to rarely come up that being super pedantic often leads to negative outcomes because presumably this would make them shine a mirror at themselves in a way that they are almost intentionally incapable of discussing.

by saagarjha

5/16/2026 at 6:54:44 AM

>but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else.

In other words, uninitialized intellectuals are just plebs with a degree or browse HN or worse reddit. They become nice "mouth pieces" for the businesses to mobilize the masses in the name of "science" or "social justice".

by qsera

5/16/2026 at 10:17:07 PM

[flagged]

by like_any_other

5/16/2026 at 6:02:09 AM

Truly a case where the old word polytropōs applies.

by kleton

5/16/2026 at 4:47:38 AM

One of the more amusing things about the vape panic is that it's now easier to purchase fentanyl adulterated meth in San Francisco than it is to get a Juul pod. And it's riskier to be a seller of the latter than the former.

Public health officials are throwing their credibility into a bonfire when they land on a fixation and use heavy handed strategies to pursue their goals, without a sense of proportionality or efficacy.

by scarmig

5/16/2026 at 7:48:26 AM

I genuinely have no idea how to purchase fentanyl adulterated meth in San Francisco despite residing there. I assume there is probably some guy who knows a guy who might hook me up but it would be pretty sketchy.

On the flip side I can literally type "vape shop" into Google and get a handful of options in walking distance that I could stroll into legally and purchase whatever I wanted, as long as it was not flavored. That too is something Google is happy to share with me.

by saagarjha

5/16/2026 at 2:36:51 PM

I live in San Francisco too and know how to get both. The vape shops sell only vape equipment, in theory; in practice, they "secretly" sell vapes behind the counter, but you have to ask for it (and occasionally they'll say they don't have any; hard to predict and plan for). And selection is limited to gaudy, giant flavored Chinese vape brands of unknown provenance; Juul is nowhere to be found.

Meth, with varying levels of fentanyl adulteration, you can get delivered or buy from the street corner, depending on your neighborhood. From where I am, I'd estimate about 10 minutes to get a hold of the meth; 20 minutes to get a hold of any vape; and Juul probably an hour (place in Daly City sells them; I'd have to drive).

by scarmig

5/16/2026 at 5:30:02 AM

I abandoned NYT when they ran cover for Iraq. How that wasn't a death sentence for US papers says a lot imo

by queenkjuul

5/16/2026 at 6:26:32 AM

Why would it be? People love patriotically murdering a bunch of other people in a place that never lifted a finger against them.

It shows us that we are strong, and others are weak, and that we need to attack the weak before they become strong and destroy us.

This sort of shit sells like hotcakes.

by vkou

5/16/2026 at 8:06:50 AM

Also those pictures of the tyrant's statue being torn down, very newsfriendly. Maybe we can have another round of those soon without even travelling outside the US.

by internet_points

5/16/2026 at 4:11:48 AM

Glad they wrote this, but then some people have been reading the "news" like this for decades.

by paleotrope

5/16/2026 at 1:13:54 PM

I am in medicine and have found that Gwern's articles in this area are at least heterodox if not outright incorrect. Before starting in medicine, I also found the style of writing persuasive but I think essays in this vein reflect a cultural difference and are not, as they purport, uncovering deep conspiracy. Fundamentally, it is hard to know things in medicine, though we are rightfully all entitled to our opinion. This is because good studies are hard to do, and often we need several studies to be confident that we understand a mechanism fully.

Here, the crux is whether we assume that Gwern's uncited Vitamin E Acetate reference is true (i.e., nicotine vapes are fine since they don't have this compound) without any evidence outside a link to wikipedia. I do not [see for example ref 1, with the caveat that we can't really tell if VEA is in use illegally]. We also are four years out from the NYT article and comfortably looking back with knowledge unavailable at the time (to wit, Gwern's assertion that EVALI has fallen with the reduction in VEA use).

I accept the point that the NYT article in question[2] may be wrong in equating damage linked to THC vapes and nicotine vapes. However, what should we do when a new recreational drug category is associated with disease? Accept manufacturer-provided explanations ("Well, this opioid is actually less addictive than others and shouldn't be regulated the same!")? Or take categorical action while awaiting new information? Medicine takes the latter approach. I accept that we should all be able to do what we wish to our bodies, but reject that the State should abet us in these efforts.

As an aside, teens falling ill (the subject of the original article) leads to a lot more social impact than would occur if an adult takes up a recreational drug. There's the actual illness, lost education, potential developmental delay, impacts on the teen's friend group, moral injury to the medical team, and likely more. This would be a separate reason to be more strident in regulating new recreational drugs targeted at minors.

1. https://www.trillianthealth.com/market-research/studies/eval...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/health/vaping-fda-nicotin...

by bonsai_spool

5/16/2026 at 1:33:55 PM

Vaping is bad.

Weed is bad.

End of.

by Scroll_Swe

5/16/2026 at 6:12:32 AM

Let's not forget: the vaping business model is to turn kids into addicts and then keep selling them the drug.

I'm not exactly going to get outraged at the NYT's rhetorical tactics against vaping.

by jmull

5/16/2026 at 6:23:41 AM

Do you believe the NYT's activist biases will always line up perfectly with yours?

by bityard

5/16/2026 at 1:12:27 PM

While that might be true there is still a point to be considered regarding vaping which is that it is an order of magnitute less harmful than smoking tabacco cigarettes because nothing is burned in a vape and the "burning stuff" is what makes normal smoking so harmful. Therefore I'd argue it should definitely be available for smokers at a price tag lower than cigarettes if they can't quit smoking to reduce harm. This would massively decrease the huge costs for health care.

by trixn

5/16/2026 at 6:25:19 AM

If I tell a lie to support a good cause and you tell a lie to support the same cause and a third and a fourth person do the same thing then, then, being so propped up by lies how can we be sure it even is a good cause worth lying for?

In this way, the harms of lying compound while the benefits do not. For this reason I believe it highly unwise to allow it to be normalized.

by yrjrjjrjjtjjr

5/16/2026 at 11:26:43 AM

I think the only one lying here is Gwern for calling the NYT liars. Gwern's claim is that by discussing someone's vape-induced injury in an article about flavored nicotine vaping, NYT misleads, because they are different vape product lines. The implication is that there cannot be an honest reason to mention the injury in this context. I disagree (as does the injured teenager, according to her quote in the article). I think it could also be understood as explaining that teens who enter the vaping market by way of flavored nicotine also have more exposure to the illegal products that caused the injury.

Gwern's evidence that NYT succeeded in their deception campaign is... riled-up internet commentators in the comments section who think vaping is evil. Which doesn't mean much because [pardon my cheekiness here] a) every comments section on every article everywhere on the internet is full of riled-up people, and b) we all know no one reads the article before commenting, therefore these outraged commentators must have developed their opinions without the aid of the NYT.

by throwworhtthrow