3 ms·

As a stats man, before I read the article I said to myself: "bet it's from a survey". With that kind of methodology, I imagine the "moderate" drinkers are goin

As a stats man, before I read the article I said to myself: "bet it's from a survey". With that kind of methodology, I imagine the "moderate" drinkers are going to contain the group of people who said they (frequently) drink, but not that much. I'd be willing to bet there will be a relationship between reporting that you drink frequently and the negative effects of alcohol that will outweigh the attempt to self report how much you drink (because the latter won't be reported accurately, but people who don't drink will tend to more accurately report and select themselves out into another category. Not only is it easier to self report whether you are a non drinker/drinker than it is to report you are a moderate/heavy drinker, I imagine there's also another confounding effect coming through given that there generally has to be something exceptional about you to be a non-drinker in our societies. Self-disclosure: practically a non-drinker, nothing ideologically against it. Might have a beer every two months socially with food. Thoughts? Especially from anyone reading the actual study?

tpeo 9y ago
As a drinker, I think there's the issue of how those 14 drinks are distributed over the week. IMO 2 drinks a day is pretty doable, but 14 drinks every Friday night over 30 years sounds like a terrible idea.
mattmanser 9y ago
I believe it's the same study that was on here a few weeks ago, it's from brain scans + tests. 550 people over 30 years, same number, same years. Self-reported consumption. Actual study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 The study is pretty detailed, but there are some oddities in the results, higher IQs drank more on average and lost more, people who drank heavily lost less than those who drank moderately. This was based in the UK, in one community, middle-class, civil servants, predominantly men, average age 43 at start of study (and I would guess almost all white, though they don't say it). Unsafe drinkers differed from safe drinkers by having a higher premorbid IQ, a higher percentage of men and smokers, and higher Framingham risk scores Some of the interesting results: Higher alcohol consumption over the study predicted faster decline on lexical fluency but not semantic fluency or word recall. People drinking has a % greater reduction from their baseline in lexical fluency per year: 7-<14 units 0.5% (14% over 30 years) 14-<21 units 0.8% (17% over 30 years) >21 units 0.6% per year (16% over 30 years) !! These figures are odd and seemingly don't add up. Is it just bad rounding? Are their graphs based on these wrong figures? !! Their conclusion doesn't highlight that it doesn't seem to matter how much you drink in terms of lexical fluency, it's that you drink at all? I don't really understand the section titled "Grey matter". 3.4 odds in lighter drinkers, 5.8 odds in heavier drinkers? They don't really explain what that means. Edit: having now listened to the audio it seems there was some technical problem with the white matter measurement, but they say they saw a decline. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508201
thisrod 9y ago
I doubt that they addressed the general problem with this type of recreational drug experiment: the hypothesis that different brains and psychology cause different behaviour is very plausible a priori, the reverse not so much. It would be good to test that with animals. You could control the alcohol consumption of rats in group A, let group B drink as much as they wanted to, and compare how the effects varied with consumption between the two groups. Has that experiment been done?
- nickledave 9y ago
  Animal studies of alcoholism is not my main field of study but I'm guessing many such studies have been done, here is one example: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.1998.tb03718.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.1998....

tpeo 9y ago

As a drinker, I think there's the issue of how those 14 drinks are distributed over the week. IMO 2 drinks a day is pretty doable, but 14 drinks every Friday night over 30 years sounds like a terrible idea.

mattmanser 9y ago

I believe it's the same study that was on here a few weeks ago, it's from brain scans + tests. 550 people over 30 years, same number, same years. Self-reported consumption. Actual study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 The study is pretty detailed, but there are some oddities in the results, higher IQs drank more on average and lost more, people who drank heavily lost less than those who drank moderately. This was based in the UK, in one community, middle-class, civil servants, predominantly men, average age 43 at start of study (and I would guess almost all white, though they don't say it). Unsafe drinkers differed from safe drinkers by having a higher premorbid IQ, a higher percentage of men and smokers, and higher Framingham risk scores Some of the interesting results: Higher alcohol consumption over the study predicted faster decline on lexical fluency but not semantic fluency or word recall. People drinking has a % greater reduction from their baseline in lexical fluency per year: 7-<14 units 0.5% (14% over 30 years) 14-<21 units 0.8% (17% over 30 years) >21 units 0.6% per year (16% over 30 years) !! These figures are odd and seemingly don't add up. Is it just bad rounding? Are their graphs based on these wrong figures? !! Their conclusion doesn't highlight that it doesn't seem to matter how much you drink in terms of lexical fluency, it's that you drink at all? I don't really understand the section titled "Grey matter". 3.4 odds in lighter drinkers, 5.8 odds in heavier drinkers? They don't really explain what that means. Edit: having now listened to the audio it seems there was some technical problem with the white matter measurement, but they say they saw a decline. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508201

thisrod 9y ago

I doubt that they addressed the general problem with this type of recreational drug experiment: the hypothesis that different brains and psychology cause different behaviour is very plausible a priori, the reverse not so much. It would be good to test that with animals. You could control the alcohol consumption of rats in group A, let group B drink as much as they wanted to, and compare how the effects varied with consumption between the two groups. Has that experiment been done?

nickledave 9y ago
Animal studies of alcoholism is not my main field of study but I'm guessing many such studies have been done, here is one example: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.1998.tb03718.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.1998....