18 ms·

Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study

198 points by legodt 10y ago

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
Doesn't greater alcohol consumption correlate with tobacco use and other adverse behaviors? It think they're making quite a stretch to say that the cause is the alcohol.
- summarite 10y ago
  I think you should look at the background papers before making such a bold and unwarranted dismissal. Any researcher worth their salt will make sure to at least try to exclude other factors, and any good peer reviewer and journal editor will point out if this is missing. So if papers consistently find this link chances are very good it's there.
  - helloworld 10y ago
    Actually, this might be an example of the "healthy user" bias in observational studies.[1] Although epidemiologists do try hard to include all of the relevant variables in their analyses, there are likely unidentified individual differences (perhaps including personality and lifestyle) that distinguish people with better health outcomes. That's why double-blind, randomized, controlled trials provide more compelling evidence of cause and effect. [1] Do we really know what makes us healthy? NY Times Magazine, Sept. 16, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t....
- TelmoMenezes 10y ago
  "The effects of characteristics of the studies, of selected covariates (tobacco) and of the gender of individuals included in the studies, were also investigated as putative sources of heterogeneity of the estimates." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2363992/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2363992/ Take a look at the papers before saying things like this.
dang 10y ago
The 'study' was discussed yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140, but this is more a media story, so we can treat it as a separate topic.
elgabogringo 10y ago
Science and economic journalism are both pretty bad. My favorite thing (ok, one of my favorite things) about blogging/internet is that I can read real-time thoughts/opinions from actual scientists and economists now instead of having to rely on professional writers and media.
- mc32 10y ago
  Social science is quite bad. Reporters on, KQED for example, will cite a single study to bolster their opinion on something. It'll go along the lines of, "UC Davis ran a study which concluded giving money directly to the homeless with no strings attached had the best results". But they won't say how many people were involved, what other studies this was compared to, how it was conducted, were there studies with opposite conclusions, etc., etc.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    My favorite is when there is a legitimate controversy in the field, and outsiders cherry pick which side to listen to. Person A references a study that just so happens to support his existing opinion. Person B searches and finds a study that contradicts it. Person A finds some criticism of that study and claims it's been "debunked". And so on, back and forth. You end up with 2 sides that believe their opinions have been absolutely confirmed by science, and have impressive sounding statistics and studies to reference. When in reality the facts are still uncertain and there is no consensus. IIRC something like this happened with minimum wage debates. With some studies showing the effect of a higher minimum wage was positive, and others showing it was negative. Almost any political issue will have some of this.
    - mc32 10y ago
      Those are good points about the whole thing. People who have little contextual understanding and take one thing, as you mention, and use that to prove their point. Another thing some people miss is the tradeoffs involved. higher minimum wages as well as lower minimum wages have consequences --some contrary to what the proponents would like. For example, while I am for higher minimum wages, I understand that while this will help many people, it has the potential to have negative effects on people at the periphery. More things getting automated could result functionally illiterate people who have little besides manual labor to offer to be sidelined even more. Who does a poultry farmer hire, now that the rate is $15, a local worker or an illegal worker now that a local is attracted by the $15/hr?
jasonjei 10y ago
What I find interesting (perhaps confusing is the better word for me) is that the other article from a few days ago that proclaimed drinking leads to cancer didn't mention that the moderate drinkers have fewer risk factors than the control group of abstainers. (The OP article does indicate the result, however.) So what is it? Is moderate drinking helping? Or is it the lifestyle of moderation helping? From the National Cancer Institute: "Can drinking red wine help prevent cancer? Researchers conducting studies using purified proteins, human cells, and laboratory animals have found that certain substances in red wine, such as resveratrol, have anticancer properties (16)."[0] Meanwhile, the same National Cancer Institute source writes that "[b]ased on extensive reviews of research studies, there is a strong scientific consensus of an association between alcohol drinking and several types of cancer (1, 2)."[0] Drinking causes cancer but red wine is known to have anticancer properties? Abstainers in one study have higher risk factors than moderate drinkers? [0] http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...
- HillaryBriss 10y ago
  I think it's unclear that the amount of resveratrol found in a few glasses of red wine is truly therapeutic. Also, it's possible to get resveratrol from red grapes and peanuts in amounts roughly comparable to that found in red wine. http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/resveratrol#food-sources http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemical...
- DanBC 10y ago
  You should not drink red wine to reduce your risk of cancer. If you're worried about cancer you should reduce your alcohol consumption to less than about one drink per day. The definition of "one drink" is a bit confusing. There are other things that are more important: stop smoking and be careful in the sun are the two obvious ones.
percept 10y ago
"IARC list ethanol in alcoholic beverages as Group 1 carcinogens and arguments "There is sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of acetaldehyde (the major metabolite of ethanol) in experimental animals."" (Wikipedia, citing http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsGroupOrder.pdf http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/Classifications...)
dahart 10y ago
> While these errors may appear minor to some, confusing an opinion piece with research is likely to seem disturbing, if not egregious, to those in the scientific community. This is far from a new problem, and this particular piece is far from egregious, relatively speaking, considering how bad public science reporting is in general in the mass media. John Oliver had fun with it recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw
wang_li 10y ago
Why should we hold journalists to a higher standard than science journals? It was only a week and a half ago that JAMA did the same thing: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698
- RA_Fisher 10y ago
  Several times I've asked authors in JAMA articles for the data (synthetic is fine!) + code used to generate the results. A few have been polite enough to respond and decline. Also, notice many of JAMA's published graphs on Twitter and in papers have no visual representation of uncertainty. Point estimates are fairly bankrupt plotted by themselves.
- jlarocco 10y ago
  Just because some other group is also wrong doesn't mean it's okay. They're both being held to the same standard, and they're both failing. Two wrongs don't make a right.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- tstactplsignore 10y ago
  How is this the same thing? The JAMA article is a factually correct article clearly presenting a specific viewpoint. There are pieces like that in journals all the time, and there should be. The original post here is talking about the misrepresentation of what is a viewpoint / opinion piece as a scientific study in the mainstream news media. They have nothing to do with each other.
  - wang_li 10y ago
    It's a one sided opinion piece that completely fails to be objective about the success of the ACA. Additionally, it wasn't peer reviewed, so it's a stretch to claim that it's factually accurate. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-berezow-hartsfield-obama-jama-20160718-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-berezow-hartsfiel...
1ris 10y ago
I'd like to know how my drinking behaviour affects my mortality. And how that effect is compared to the consumption of tobacco, marijuana, participating in road traffic, jogging and overwight. While it's clear that alcohol is not particular healthy, I feel the risk is negligible compared to other common behaviours. I like alcohol very much and I'd like to make a informed decision about it. But i dearly miss the curial, end-user friendly information.
- chestervonwinch 10y ago
  About 3 drinks per day puts you from 1.5 to 3 times more likely to develop various cancers, according to: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet#q2 http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...
  - brador 10y ago
    It's just sugary yeast water though. My guess is it's the obesity from drinking that increases the chance of the cancers not the drink itself. Which has then created a correlation between alcohol and the cancers cited.
    - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
      It's not just sugary yeast water, it's alcohol, a toxin. If alcohol were not the cause but fat/obesity, we wouldn't see cancer concentrated on the oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum.
    - icegreentea 10y ago
      Its not just sugary yeast water. The first step of alcohol metabolism is conversion to acetaldehyde, which is then processed further into acetic acid. Acetaldehyde is very much a carcinogen (and its also directly DNA damaging). The science is super clear. We even have this control population called "east asians". The "asian flush" phenomenon is the result of hyperactive ADH1 (which converts ethanol to acetaldehyde) and relatively inactive forms of the enzymes required for the result of the conversion, resulting in acetaldehyde sticking around in higher quantities and for much longer than say a european population.
nchelluri 10y ago
I think modern journalism is like application development at a startup, except with even less QA. "Get it out!!! Get it out!!!" And since people will forget about the article in a few days anyway, as long as nobody who knows better and knows how to make the right noise about it and has enough energy, time, and incentive to actually do so reads it and starts the correction ball rolling, it's just, kinda... there. Archived to be read by no one but Google and someone doing a long tail search some years to come, hopefully with no more important purpose than writing a paper for school that again, will be disposed of, this time more thoroughly. We just create so much crap for consumption. Even public broadcasting is full of the 24-72hr news cycle. I've written code that I was employed for where I was like, why are we doing this. I assume journalists are the same.
- quantumhobbit 10y ago
  It is a race to the bottom as long as we value speed over quality. It is a shame too because I think consumers would really prefer quality over speed for software and news, I know I would. But consumption of these things isn't a rational deliberation by the consumer, but a reflex click or don't click. Hence the proliferation of click bait headlines and bs startup promises. I think the key is reputation and branding. When all news sources are crappy, I will stick to whatever is free and at the top of my feed. Maybe this is why pay walls are a failing strategy, none of the pay walled papers have a good enough reputation for quality to justify the expense in both money and convenience. For example Apple used to have such a reputation for quality that the apple tax was something people gladly paid. They still do, but around 2007 this was even more obvious. Remember cut and paste on the iPhone, Apple's reputation for quality was such that millions of customers happily waited for basic functionality. Any other company would have had to rush out cut and paste, but Apple could take their time and get it right. I don't think there is anything similar in journalism. No one says to themselves "That looks like a good story, but I'll just wait a few days and read about it in the New York Times." We can blame the consumer's impatience, but I think we should blame journalists for not cultivating such a reputation for quality. It would be really hard and probably lose money for years, but I want to see a paper try that approach. Have an explicit and well know strategy of ,"we aren't going to be first with any stories, but everything you read here is well researched almost certainly true". It would take some time but just imagine what a paper with that kind of reputation could accomplish and the sort of loyalty it could have from customers.
thefastlane 10y ago
best not to rely on the media to provide us executive summaries of academic papers. just go read the paper itself (DOI is 10.1111/add.13477). it's a very useful read for getting up to speed on where we are in terms of understanding cancer and alcohol.
Hello71 10y ago
Amusingly, this article misspells the name of the author of the referenced article several times as "Conner" instead of "Connor", implying that the writers were in a rush to get it out the door.
sigdoubt 10y ago
Was anyone able to parse this paragraph? I keep getting stuck on the contradiction. Which is mildly hilarious in an article about articles being misinterpreted. > She goes on, however, to knock back links suggesting that drinking may lower a person's risks of cardiovascular disease (CVD), noting that people who drink moderately also tend to have other lifestyle factors that lower their disease risk. Or, put another way, she noted that “in a large US survey in 2005, 27 of 30 CVD risk factors were shown to be more prevalent in abstainers than moderate drinkers.”
- deadhand 10y ago
  Do you mean in reference to "knock back"? I think its supposed to be knock back like one would with a beer - as in, consume readily - rather than knock back as in knock away or disregard.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  The data showing that moderate drinkers had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease was flawed. In the study the abstainers had more CVD risk factors than the drinkers, making any comparisons that were made invalid.
known 10y ago
What does alcohol do to your body and brain? http://qz.com/696693/what-does-alcohol-actually-do-to-your-body-and-brain/ http://qz.com/696693/what-does-alcohol-actually-do-to-your-b...
nezt 10y ago
Here's a study correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of lymphoma: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910 Here's one correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of kidney cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/ Here's a study linking ethanol consumption with a reduced risk of ALS: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740 And it's not just one study linking ethanol to a lower risk of CVD-- it's several. The story is the same for all cause mortality. Acetaldehyde doesn't fully explain elevated risks of throat and mouth cancer, in my opinion... Acetaldehyde is a downstream metabolite, whereas the epithelium of the mouth and throat are tissues that ethanol is clearly coming in direct contact with. Again, this is just a crude hypothesis. Sure ethanol is a toxin, but attempting to avoid it in an attempt to avoid toxins or carcinogens is a fantasy. Carcinogens are everywhere -- you breath them, eat them, ingest them, absorb them constantly. This is why low/moderate exposure to sunlight, alcohol, certain phytochemicals might actually be 'hormetic'. I'm not saying that in an era of biotechnology and whole genome sequencing, ethanol consumption will be optimal. When we reach that point, we will most likely be consuming some kind of nutrient gel that contains everything the body needs. We will likely inhabit carcinogen free environments. Until that point, and I say this to all my fellow autistic nerds and hacker news readers, it's probably better to go have a drink or two with that cute girl who sits a few cubes down. If you want to extend life, invest/educate yourself on emerging biotechnologies. Otherwise you'll need to start worrying about the carcinogenic materials your electronics occasionally off-gas. Or the PCBs in your wild caught salmon. Or the benzaldehyde. Or the arsenic in your brown rice. Or the pesticide residues in your clothing. Or the ... nevermind.

198 points by legodt 10y ago

Doesn't greater alcohol consumption correlate with tobacco use and other adverse behaviors? It think they're making quite a stretch to say that the cause is the alcohol.

summarite 10y ago
I think you should look at the background papers before making such a bold and unwarranted dismissal. Any researcher worth their salt will make sure to at least try to exclude other factors, and any good peer reviewer and journal editor will point out if this is missing. So if papers consistently find this link chances are very good it's there.
- helloworld 10y ago
  Actually, this might be an example of the "healthy user" bias in observational studies.[1] Although epidemiologists do try hard to include all of the relevant variables in their analyses, there are likely unidentified individual differences (perhaps including personality and lifestyle) that distinguish people with better health outcomes. That's why double-blind, randomized, controlled trials provide more compelling evidence of cause and effect. [1] Do we really know what makes us healthy? NY Times Magazine, Sept. 16, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t....
TelmoMenezes 10y ago
"The effects of characteristics of the studies, of selected covariates (tobacco) and of the gender of individuals included in the studies, were also investigated as putative sources of heterogeneity of the estimates." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2363992/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2363992/ Take a look at the papers before saying things like this.

dang 10y ago

The 'study' was discussed yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140, but this is more a media story, so we can treat it as a separate topic.

elgabogringo 10y ago

Science and economic journalism are both pretty bad. My favorite thing (ok, one of my favorite things) about blogging/internet is that I can read real-time thoughts/opinions from actual scientists and economists now instead of having to rely on professional writers and media.

mc32 10y ago
Social science is quite bad. Reporters on, KQED for example, will cite a single study to bolster their opinion on something. It'll go along the lines of, "UC Davis ran a study which concluded giving money directly to the homeless with no strings attached had the best results". But they won't say how many people were involved, what other studies this was compared to, how it was conducted, were there studies with opposite conclusions, etc., etc.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  My favorite is when there is a legitimate controversy in the field, and outsiders cherry pick which side to listen to. Person A references a study that just so happens to support his existing opinion. Person B searches and finds a study that contradicts it. Person A finds some criticism of that study and claims it's been "debunked". And so on, back and forth. You end up with 2 sides that believe their opinions have been absolutely confirmed by science, and have impressive sounding statistics and studies to reference. When in reality the facts are still uncertain and there is no consensus. IIRC something like this happened with minimum wage debates. With some studies showing the effect of a higher minimum wage was positive, and others showing it was negative. Almost any political issue will have some of this.
  - mc32 10y ago
    Those are good points about the whole thing. People who have little contextual understanding and take one thing, as you mention, and use that to prove their point. Another thing some people miss is the tradeoffs involved. higher minimum wages as well as lower minimum wages have consequences --some contrary to what the proponents would like. For example, while I am for higher minimum wages, I understand that while this will help many people, it has the potential to have negative effects on people at the periphery. More things getting automated could result functionally illiterate people who have little besides manual labor to offer to be sidelined even more. Who does a poultry farmer hire, now that the rate is $15, a local worker or an illegal worker now that a local is attracted by the $15/hr?

jasonjei 10y ago

What I find interesting (perhaps confusing is the better word for me) is that the other article from a few days ago that proclaimed drinking leads to cancer didn't mention that the moderate drinkers have fewer risk factors than the control group of abstainers. (The OP article does indicate the result, however.) So what is it? Is moderate drinking helping? Or is it the lifestyle of moderation helping? From the National Cancer Institute: "Can drinking red wine help prevent cancer? Researchers conducting studies using purified proteins, human cells, and laboratory animals have found that certain substances in red wine, such as resveratrol, have anticancer properties (16)."[0] Meanwhile, the same National Cancer Institute source writes that "[b]ased on extensive reviews of research studies, there is a strong scientific consensus of an association between alcohol drinking and several types of cancer (1, 2)."[0] Drinking causes cancer but red wine is known to have anticancer properties? Abstainers in one study have higher risk factors than moderate drinkers? [0] http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...

HillaryBriss 10y ago
I think it's unclear that the amount of resveratrol found in a few glasses of red wine is truly therapeutic. Also, it's possible to get resveratrol from red grapes and peanuts in amounts roughly comparable to that found in red wine. http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/resveratrol#food-sources http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemical...
DanBC 10y ago
You should not drink red wine to reduce your risk of cancer. If you're worried about cancer you should reduce your alcohol consumption to less than about one drink per day. The definition of "one drink" is a bit confusing. There are other things that are more important: stop smoking and be careful in the sun are the two obvious ones.

percept 10y ago

"IARC list ethanol in alcoholic beverages as Group 1 carcinogens and arguments "There is sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of acetaldehyde (the major metabolite of ethanol) in experimental animals."" (Wikipedia, citing http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsGroupOrder.pdf http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/Classifications...)

dahart 10y ago

> While these errors may appear minor to some, confusing an opinion piece with research is likely to seem disturbing, if not egregious, to those in the scientific community. This is far from a new problem, and this particular piece is far from egregious, relatively speaking, considering how bad public science reporting is in general in the mass media. John Oliver had fun with it recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw

wang_li 10y ago

Why should we hold journalists to a higher standard than science journals? It was only a week and a half ago that JAMA did the same thing: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698

RA_Fisher 10y ago
Several times I've asked authors in JAMA articles for the data (synthetic is fine!) + code used to generate the results. A few have been polite enough to respond and decline. Also, notice many of JAMA's published graphs on Twitter and in papers have no visual representation of uncertainty. Point estimates are fairly bankrupt plotted by themselves.
jlarocco 10y ago
Just because some other group is also wrong doesn't mean it's okay. They're both being held to the same standard, and they're both failing. Two wrongs don't make a right.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tstactplsignore 10y ago
How is this the same thing? The JAMA article is a factually correct article clearly presenting a specific viewpoint. There are pieces like that in journals all the time, and there should be. The original post here is talking about the misrepresentation of what is a viewpoint / opinion piece as a scientific study in the mainstream news media. They have nothing to do with each other.
- wang_li 10y ago
  It's a one sided opinion piece that completely fails to be objective about the success of the ACA. Additionally, it wasn't peer reviewed, so it's a stretch to claim that it's factually accurate. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-berezow-hartsfield-obama-jama-20160718-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-berezow-hartsfiel...

1ris 10y ago

I'd like to know how my drinking behaviour affects my mortality. And how that effect is compared to the consumption of tobacco, marijuana, participating in road traffic, jogging and overwight. While it's clear that alcohol is not particular healthy, I feel the risk is negligible compared to other common behaviours. I like alcohol very much and I'd like to make a informed decision about it. But i dearly miss the curial, end-user friendly information.

chestervonwinch 10y ago
About 3 drinks per day puts you from 1.5 to 3 times more likely to develop various cancers, according to: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet#q2 http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...
- brador 10y ago
  It's just sugary yeast water though. My guess is it's the obesity from drinking that increases the chance of the cancers not the drink itself. Which has then created a correlation between alcohol and the cancers cited.
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
    It's not just sugary yeast water, it's alcohol, a toxin. If alcohol were not the cause but fat/obesity, we wouldn't see cancer concentrated on the oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum.
  - icegreentea 10y ago
    Its not just sugary yeast water. The first step of alcohol metabolism is conversion to acetaldehyde, which is then processed further into acetic acid. Acetaldehyde is very much a carcinogen (and its also directly DNA damaging). The science is super clear. We even have this control population called "east asians". The "asian flush" phenomenon is the result of hyperactive ADH1 (which converts ethanol to acetaldehyde) and relatively inactive forms of the enzymes required for the result of the conversion, resulting in acetaldehyde sticking around in higher quantities and for much longer than say a european population.

nchelluri 10y ago

I think modern journalism is like application development at a startup, except with even less QA. "Get it out!!! Get it out!!!" And since people will forget about the article in a few days anyway, as long as nobody who knows better and knows how to make the right noise about it and has enough energy, time, and incentive to actually do so reads it and starts the correction ball rolling, it's just, kinda... there. Archived to be read by no one but Google and someone doing a long tail search some years to come, hopefully with no more important purpose than writing a paper for school that again, will be disposed of, this time more thoroughly. We just create so much crap for consumption. Even public broadcasting is full of the 24-72hr news cycle. I've written code that I was employed for where I was like, why are we doing this. I assume journalists are the same.

quantumhobbit 10y ago
It is a race to the bottom as long as we value speed over quality. It is a shame too because I think consumers would really prefer quality over speed for software and news, I know I would. But consumption of these things isn't a rational deliberation by the consumer, but a reflex click or don't click. Hence the proliferation of click bait headlines and bs startup promises. I think the key is reputation and branding. When all news sources are crappy, I will stick to whatever is free and at the top of my feed. Maybe this is why pay walls are a failing strategy, none of the pay walled papers have a good enough reputation for quality to justify the expense in both money and convenience. For example Apple used to have such a reputation for quality that the apple tax was something people gladly paid. They still do, but around 2007 this was even more obvious. Remember cut and paste on the iPhone, Apple's reputation for quality was such that millions of customers happily waited for basic functionality. Any other company would have had to rush out cut and paste, but Apple could take their time and get it right. I don't think there is anything similar in journalism. No one says to themselves "That looks like a good story, but I'll just wait a few days and read about it in the New York Times." We can blame the consumer's impatience, but I think we should blame journalists for not cultivating such a reputation for quality. It would be really hard and probably lose money for years, but I want to see a paper try that approach. Have an explicit and well know strategy of ,"we aren't going to be first with any stories, but everything you read here is well researched almost certainly true". It would take some time but just imagine what a paper with that kind of reputation could accomplish and the sort of loyalty it could have from customers.

thefastlane 10y ago

best not to rely on the media to provide us executive summaries of academic papers. just go read the paper itself (DOI is 10.1111/add.13477). it's a very useful read for getting up to speed on where we are in terms of understanding cancer and alcohol.

Hello71 10y ago

Amusingly, this article misspells the name of the author of the referenced article several times as "Conner" instead of "Connor", implying that the writers were in a rush to get it out the door.

sigdoubt 10y ago

Was anyone able to parse this paragraph? I keep getting stuck on the contradiction. Which is mildly hilarious in an article about articles being misinterpreted. > She goes on, however, to knock back links suggesting that drinking may lower a person's risks of cardiovascular disease (CVD), noting that people who drink moderately also tend to have other lifestyle factors that lower their disease risk. Or, put another way, she noted that “in a large US survey in 2005, 27 of 30 CVD risk factors were shown to be more prevalent in abstainers than moderate drinkers.”

deadhand 10y ago
Do you mean in reference to "knock back"? I think its supposed to be knock back like one would with a beer - as in, consume readily - rather than knock back as in knock away or disregard.
lostlogin 10y ago
The data showing that moderate drinkers had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease was flawed. In the study the abstainers had more CVD risk factors than the drinkers, making any comparisons that were made invalid.

known 10y ago

What does alcohol do to your body and brain? http://qz.com/696693/what-does-alcohol-actually-do-to-your-body-and-brain/ http://qz.com/696693/what-does-alcohol-actually-do-to-your-b...

nezt 10y ago

Here's a study correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of lymphoma: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910 Here's one correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of kidney cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/ Here's a study linking ethanol consumption with a reduced risk of ALS: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740 And it's not just one study linking ethanol to a lower risk of CVD-- it's several. The story is the same for all cause mortality. Acetaldehyde doesn't fully explain elevated risks of throat and mouth cancer, in my opinion... Acetaldehyde is a downstream metabolite, whereas the epithelium of the mouth and throat are tissues that ethanol is clearly coming in direct contact with. Again, this is just a crude hypothesis. Sure ethanol is a toxin, but attempting to avoid it in an attempt to avoid toxins or carcinogens is a fantasy. Carcinogens are everywhere -- you breath them, eat them, ingest them, absorb them constantly. This is why low/moderate exposure to sunlight, alcohol, certain phytochemicals might actually be 'hormetic'. I'm not saying that in an era of biotechnology and whole genome sequencing, ethanol consumption will be optimal. When we reach that point, we will most likely be consuming some kind of nutrient gel that contains everything the body needs. We will likely inhabit carcinogen free environments. Until that point, and I say this to all my fellow autistic nerds and hacker news readers, it's probably better to go have a drink or two with that cute girl who sits a few cubes down. If you want to extend life, invest/educate yourself on emerging biotechnologies. Otherwise you'll need to start worrying about the carcinogenic materials your electronics occasionally off-gas. Or the PCBs in your wild caught salmon. Or the benzaldehyde. Or the arsenic in your brown rice. Or the pesticide residues in your clothing. Or the ... nevermind.