Geoffrey Kabat

Key takeaways

Geoffrey Kabat belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Geoffrey Kabat to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Geoffrey Kabat from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Geoffrey C. Kabat is an American epidemiologist, cancer researcher, and author. He has been on the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and State University of New York, Stony Brook. In 2003, he was co-author of a disputed BMJ study funded by the tobacco industry that found secondhand smoke did not affect mortality. Along with his scientific publications, Kabat has written four books and many articles for general audiences. As of 2019, he was a member of the board of directors of the Science Literacy Project and the board of scientific advisors of the American Council on Science and Health.

Early life and education Kabat graduated from Haverford College in 1967, majoring in French, and then acquired a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature from Columbia University. He has stated he got into epidemiology "by chance", partially because health research was much more valued and better funded than research in Russian literature in the mid-1970s.

Tobacco study

In 2003, Kabat, who then worked at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, co-authored a study with James Enstrom in The BMJ examining the association between passive smoking and tobacco-related mortality. The study concluded that its results "do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect." The study was funded and heavily publicized by the tobacco industry. The paper was heavily criticized by the scientific community. Of the many letters to The BMJ in response to the article, few provided "a dispassionate appraisal" of the work, and the editor of The BMJ stood by its decision to print the paper, assessing it "a useful contribution to an important debate." One criticism was that the study had failed to identify a comparison group of "unexposed" persons due to the pervasive exposure to secondhand smoke in the 1950s. In a US racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies, the Enstrom and Kabat paper was cited by the US District Court as "a prime example of how nine tobacco companies engaged in criminal racketeering and fraud to hide the dangers of tobacco smoke." The Court found that the study had been funded and managed by the Center for Indoor Air Research, a tobacco industry front group tasked with "offsetting" damaging studies on passive smoking, as well as by Philip Morris who stated that Enstrom's work was "clearly litigation-oriented." On May 22, 2009, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the lower court's 2006 ruling.

Books and articles Kabat has written a number of science articles for general audiences, including articles for the Genetic Literacy Project, Quillette, and Slate. He has also written several books.

Books

Ideology and Imagination Kabat's first book, Ideology and Imagination: The Image of Society in Dostoevsky, was published in 1978. In a review, David Matual described the book as exploring "the complex interrelationship between the imaginative work of a great writer and the social and historical milieu of his creations", and said that the book contained "several excellent and instructive chapters" but "lacks focus".

Hyping Health Risks Kabat is also the author of the book Hyping Health Risks, published in 2008 by Columbia University Press. The book examines several alleged environmental health risks, such as the proposed link between artificial chemicals and cancer, and concludes that these risks have been distorted. A 2017 Skeptical Inquirer review says that "Kabat ... helps readers understand relative versus absolute risk, medical research, [and] how pseudoscientific and questionable claims get [mis]reported by news media and activists...." David A. Savitz reviewed the book and wrote "For the most part, the story of truth and misrepresentation of evidence on health risks [in the book] was engaging". It was also reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine, where Barbara Gastel wrote that "Kabat is at his best in the chapters in which he presents the case studies," but she criticized the book's first chapter, entitled "Introduction: Toward a Sociology of Health Hazards in Daily Life". Neil Pearce wrote in the International Journal of Epidemiology that he "became more frustrated and less impressed as [he] worked [his] way through the book" and criticized the book for its "lack of balance".

Getting Risk Right Kabat's third book, Getting Risk Right: Understanding the Science of Elusive Health Risks, was published in 2016 and builds on the themes in Hyping Health Risks. In his review of Getting Risk Right, Terence Hines wrote that Kabat "more than accomplishes" his goals of understanding how we can make great scientific progress solving some problems while making little headway with others, and why there is often much greater public attention to scientifically questionable claims than to actual scientific progress. Hines said of the chapter reviewing the question of whether cell phones cause cancer, it "alone is worth the price of the book." Anne Fairbrother's review in Issues in Science and Technology said that although the book's "writing is uneven", it "presents important topics for consideration and four fascinating and well-documented epidemiological case studies". Rick Mathis wrote in Health Affairs that it's an "important book" with an "engaging discussion of the use and misuse of information on health risks", though "at times too technical for the general reader". Both Fairbrother and Mathis highlighted the book's discussion of the important difference between hazard (the potential for harm) and risk (the actual probability of the hazard causing harm in a given situation). In his review for the American Council on Science and Health, Josh Bloom called it "a compelling read", and complimented Kabat's ability "to take complex issues and make them both understandable, easily readable and interesting".

Slava His fourth book, Slava: The Life and Words of a Croatian Jew, was published in Croatia.

References

Further reading Bero LA, Glantz S, Hong MK (April 2005). "The limits of competing interest disclosures". Tob Control. 14 (2): 118–26. PMC 1748015. PMID 15791022.

External links Kessler, Gladys (August 17, 2006). "United States of America v. Philip Morris et al.: Final Opinion of Judge Gladys Kessler" (PDF). United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Geoffrey Kabat

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Geoffrey Kabat claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Geoffrey Kabat before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Geoffrey Kabat ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Geoffrey Kabat

In research: Geoffrey Kabat appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Geoffrey Kabat in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Geoffrey Kabat is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Albert Einstein College of Medicine faculty, American epidemiologists, Cancer epidemiologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Geoffrey Kabat outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Geoffrey Kabat in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Geoffrey Kabat means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Geoffrey Kabat out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Geoffrey Kabat in simple terms?

Geoffrey C. Kabat is an American epidemiologist, cancer researcher, and author.

Why does Geoffrey Kabat matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Geoffrey Kabat?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Geoffrey Kabat.