Can you imagine a news article with that title? Certainly not. How about this one: Abstaining from alcohol significantly shortens life. There, that’s more sensational, isn’t it? (To be fair, that’s the title on the page, not the title of the article. I’m not sure why they aren’t the same.)
I’ve seen news articles circulating about a recent study from the University of Texas at Austin that followed 1,824 adults between the ages of 55 and 65, and compared how likely they were to die over a 20-year period depending on whether they abstained from drinking alcohol, drank moderately, or drank heavily. The results indicated that moderate drinkers had the greatest longevity, followed by heavy drinkers, with abstainers being the most likely to die.
This is where the science reporters stopped paying attention, and started writing sensationalist “alcohol is good for you!” news articles.
I’m skeptical of this interpretation. The technique being used by the researchers is one that is very common in health and social science studies, whereby the researcher measures many real-world variables, and uses linear regression to tease out the effects of each variable on the variable under study. (more…)
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