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"Corollary 5: The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Conflict
by pc2g4d 9y ago
"Corollary 5: The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Conflicts of interest and prejudice may increase bias. Conflicts of interest are very common in biomedical research, and typically they are inadequately and sparsely reported."
-- Why Most Published Research Findings are False
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
The base of research on alcohol is inherently biased due to both financial conflicts of interest and the general desire to see something enjoyable as healthy (alcohol, chocolate, sex, etc.) In addition, even when reliable research is performed, its results are inconvenient and thus discarded by journalists, health professionals, and the general public. It's an uphill battle to get to the truth of the matter and make it stick. But it seems we're making some progress, if articles such as these are any indication.
- mr_toad 9y agoSomething that causes cancer is in the headlines every week. It’s not easy to assess either the relative risks, or the quality of the research without making a career out of it.
- forgotmypw 8y agoThe underlying "cause" of cancer is the cells reverting back to their ancient state of independence and non-cooperation, and all the fail-safes that keep this from happening failing. The reason for this happening is stress on the cells. And there are more and more things that can cause us cellular stress. It is a bit of information overload, but if you separate things into "my great-great-grandparents were exposed to this in their daily lives" and "my great-great-grandparents were not exposed to this in their daily lives", you may begin go see a pattern. And by "exposed to this", I mean looking closely at the exposure type and limits. They might have had wine, and even hard liquor, but probably not available every day.
- batty_alex 8y agoThere's history to suggest that alcohol was used as currency to pay workers in ancient times [1]. Alcohol has been with us for the long haul and has been available to our ancestors in large quantities for most of our history. It's almost engrained in our history. Not that it makes alcohol healthy but, I don't agree it's safe to just look back and say, "Yo, great-grand-papa could only afford to get wasted once a week - maybe that's the secret?" [1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-stub-shows-that-ancient-workers-were-paid-in-beer/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-st...
- sjg007 8y agoAll it means is that they survived long enough to reproduce to have your parents etc.. So look at the age they had them and how old they are when they died (or now). There is probably a selection event but also availability and potency have increased recently.