Michael B. Siegel is an American tobacco control researcher and public health researcher. He is a professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health.[1]
Siegel completed his residency in preventive medicine at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health and trained in epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control for two years.[1] His former mentor is tobacco-control activist Stanton Glantz.[2]
Siegel is known for his work in the area of tobacco control and the harmful effects of passive smoking.[1] However, in 2007, he published a paper dismissing claims that brief exposure to secondhand smoke increased the risk of heart attacks or presented any other significant cardiovascular risk to nonsmokers.[3] He has been called out for going astray by his former mentor Stanton Glantz who called him "a tragic figure - he has completely lost it," and "his view is that everybody in the tobacco control movement is corrupt and misguided except for him".[3] He also published a study in 2013 that found that in the United States, "states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."[4] He published a similar study the following year, which concluded that "state-level gun ownership...is significantly associated with firearm and total homicides but not with non-firearm homicides."[5] [6] In 2016, he and Emily Rothman published another study that found a "substantial" association between gun ownership rates and the rate at which women died from firearm homicide.[7] [8] In July 2016, he and Rothman published another study that found a strong positive association between gun ownership rates and gun-related suicide rates in the United States. The same study found a strong association between gun ownership rates and overall suicide rates, but only among men.[9] He has also published research about how the soda industry spends millions on health organizations, yet simultaneously lobbies against public health laws intended to reduce consumption of their products.[10]
Siegel has argued that electronic cigarettes could lead to conventional cigarettes becoming obsolete.[2]