What was on the show:
They cite two papers, claiming they are the only works done on second hand smoking.
Then discredit one of the papers, by saying it was said in court it did not adhere to the scientific method by cherry picking it's data.
This court decision was questionable, and indeed in 2002, it was overturned:http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/982407.P.pdf

Looking more closely at the second paper (jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/19/1440.full.pdf), they concluded that no causal evidence was found for sudden death syndrome in babies.
But they did find causal evidence in adults exposed in the work place, or through their spouse.
Then Penn dismiss this last claim by saying it was statistically insignificant.

Going over this last paper, I could not find where they said it was insignificant... They did have this phrase there, but it did not refer to that claim!

These two papers aside, there are many more papers cited by health organizations, not only these two.

And a collection of these works in an easy, peer reviewed summary, can be found here:
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/report/fullreport.pdf

Also, a nice read is the Wikipedia pagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking


I'm disappointed, this episode was clearly bullshit!!!

For this document:
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/19/1440.full.pdf



I don't have the actual Bullshit episode handy to compare Penn's words, but here are some really weak conclusions they listed in that paper. A single dismissal as "not significant" might not be scientifically thorough, but does not sound entirely unfair:

"No clear doseresponse relationship could be
demonstrated for cumulative spousal ETS exposure."

"Ever exposure to ETS from other sources was
not associated with lung cancer risk. "
[other = non-spousal or non-workplace]

"Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure
to ETS and lung cancer risk. We did find weak evidence of a
doseresponse relationship between risk of lung cancer and
exposure to spousal and workplace ETS."
(apparently they only show dose-response when the two are combined)

"We found no increased risk for childhood exposure, a
result consistent with most of the available data."

"There was also a nonsignificant doseresponse relationship
with duration of exposure."

"We also found an association of similar strength with
workplace exposure. Doseresponse relationships were more
consistent and risks were higher, although in most cases they
were not statistically significant, with combined indicators of
spousal and workplace ETS exposure."




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking#Evidence

Wikipedia lists a JAMA article from 1992 as having evidence of secondhand smoke, but it was limited to people who actually live with smokers, not people who walk past smokers in public or at work.

The Bullshit episode was from 2003. The rest of Wikipedia's sources, other than the 1992 article, are from 2004 and later. The WHO study was published in 2004, so I assume that they must have thought there was at least some ambiguity to clear up.

A similar onslaught of criticism came from people who, having the benefit of an extra 8 years of research, declare Penn and Teller to be deniers because of a 2003 episode on "environmental hysteria".