Research Avenues for Exploration of Hookah (Shisha, Narghile) Smoking
Open to Students (graduate, postgraduate and beyond)
and Confirmed Scientists in all Disciplines
JOURNALISM (investigative reporting) Ø How the sudden hookah epidemic has actually triggered the drafting of national bans on indoor smoking across the world Ø The role of mass media as a vehicle of wrong public health messages Ø Striking analogies between the war in Iraq and the war on hookah ECONOMICS (and JOURNALISM) Ø How and why has the hookah become a foe for the Big Three: Big Pharmaceuticals, Big Tobacco, Big Anti-Tobacco Ø Funding of research on ““waterpipe”” by Fogarty Centre, NIH, PHS, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Canadian RITC, etc. Investigation on rationale and priorities. Ø Conflicts of interest in studies on hookah smoking Ø The World Health Organization and hookah smoking PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE Ø Medical consequences of the use of the nominalist, functionalist, reductionist and clannish “waterpipe”™ term Ø The "peer-review" process in studies on hookah smoking: the 2002-2007 historic experience Ø The “evidence-based medicine”, “good science” and hookah smoking PUBLIC HEALTH Ø Hookah and harm reduction. What can be done right now. TOXICOLOGY (and ECONOMICS) Ø Hookah and the tobacco-free tobamel/mo'assel smoking mixtures Ø Chemical analysis of the pyrotechnic charcoal used by hookah smokers Ø Critique of the upcoming 3rd erroneous WHO report on hookah smoking [Note: report not yet published. Preparing for the CRITIQUE] Ø Detailed analysis of a tar produced by heating a tobacco-molasses mixture. Comparison (of major hazardous substances) with cigarette tar. [Note: ONGOING] PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY (and ECONOMICS) Ø Hookah smoking and NTR (Nicotine “Replacement” Therapies) Ø Champix, Champaign and hubble-bubble… SOCIOLOGY and ANTHROPOLOGY of HEALTH Ø Medical consequences of neo-orientalism in studies on hookah smoking
EPIDEMIOLOGY (and PUBLIC HEALTH) Ø Cigarette smoking as a gateway to the hookah practice. Hookah as an ideal scapegoat for the failure of supposedly efficiently designed prevention programmes.
BIBLIOLOGY Ø “Impact factor” versus “parroting factor” in studies on hookah smoking HUMANITIES (Literature, Arts, History, Philology, etc.) Ø An anthology of poetry and hookah Ø Hookah smoking in the Moghol times Ø The Chinese and Vietnamese water pipes Ø Asian women and their use of hookah
Ø Translation into Chinese and other international languages of all the available counter-literature
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