Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I'm trying to help my nine year old come up with an experiment. It is on the effects of smoking on the heart. There seems to be alot of experiments for the effects of smoking on the lungs, but nothing for the heart. We have all the research done and everything typed up, but on ideas for an experiment. Any bit of help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance
Shannon

Wow! I can't think of any experiment that one can ethically do to measure the effect of smoking on the heart. Since there is already a lot of evidence that smoking is dangerous, it would not be ethical to ask anyone to smoke.

One thing that researchers do is to collect a lot of data over many years on the health of a large number of people. The data will include whether, and how much, each person smoked, dietary habits, and anything else that might conceivable be important. One then analyzes the data to determine whether there is any correlation between one personal factor, such as heavy smoking, and a disease.

One thing that a student could do would be to look up results of some of these studies and write a research report. A lot of scientific papers are simply new analyses of previously published data.

Key words to use in a Web search: Framingham study, Nurse study, metaanalysis. Heart + smoking.