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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.
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.
"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.""<p>(Wikipedia, citing <a href="http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsGroupOrder.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/Classifications...</a>)
The 'study' was discussed yesterday at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140</a>, but this is more a media story, so we can treat it as a separate topic.
Here's a study correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of lymphoma:
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910</a><p>Here's one correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of kidney cancer:
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/</a><p>Here's a study linking ethanol consumption with a reduced risk of ALS:
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740</a><p>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.<p>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'.<p>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.
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.)<p>So what is it? Is moderate drinking helping? Or is it the lifestyle of moderation helping?<p>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]<p>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]<p>Drinking causes cancer but red wine is known to have anticancer properties? Abstainers in one study have higher risk factors than moderate drinkers?<p>[0] <a href="http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet" rel="nofollow">http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...</a>
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.
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.<p>> 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.”
> 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.<p>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.<p>John Oliver had fun with it recently:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw</a>
What does alcohol do to your body and brain?
<a href="http://qz.com/696693/what-does-alcohol-actually-do-to-your-body-and-brain/" rel="nofollow">http://qz.com/696693/what-does-alcohol-actually-do-to-your-b...</a>
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: <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698" rel="nofollow">http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698</a>
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.