The Big Hard

Drinking alcohol brings no health benefits, study finds

Apr 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-alcohol-health-benefits.html

You've been told that one drink a day is actually good for your health -- but it's so hard to believe, right? It's good for your heart! It can't be true right?

No, it's not true. We screwed up, for decades, using one bad study after another to support a crazy idea. Can it be true that not one person stopped and said, wait, that sounds too good, let me double check that study. Not until now. 

It's been named "former-drinker bias", and it will be in every public health textbook for the rest of time starting now, as an example of what can go wrong with biostatistics and epidemiological research. 

We heard rumblings of this a while back...

• via Public Library of Science: John U, et al. (2021) Alcohol abstinence and mortality in a general population sample of adults in Germany: A cohort study. PLoS Med 18(11): e1003819. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003819 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003819
• Baselines, Biases and Big Data Problems - The Secrets of Statistics and the Magic of Metrology https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2022/04/baselines-biases-and-big-data-problems.html

And now this article sums it up pretty well:

• Former drinkers aren't lifetime abstainers -- For example, many studies tend to place former drinkers in the same group as lifetime abstainers, referring to them all as "non-drinkers," Stockwell said.
• But former drinkers typically have given up or cut down on alcohol because of health problems, Stockwell said. The new analysis found that former drinkers actually have a 22% higher risk of death compared to abstainers.
• Their presence in the "non-drinker" group biases the results, creating the illusion that light daily drinking is healthy, Stockwell said.
• It's called "former-drinker bias"; and the reason it's been hiding in our public health research for decades? 
• "This is an overview of a lot of really bad studies," Stockwell said. "There's a lot of confounding and bias in these studies, and our analysis illustrates that."

via Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia:  Jinhui Zhao et al, Association Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality, JAMA Network Open (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.6185

https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.6185

Image credit: AI Art - My Feet On Yours by Disney Concept Artist - 2022

Post Script:

Continuum of Risk

• 2 standard drinks or less a week -- You are likely to avoid alcohol-related consequences for yourself or others at this level.
• 3 to 6 standard drinks a week -- Your risk of developing several types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer, increases at this level.
• 7 standard drinks or more a week -- Your risk of heart disease or stroke increases significantly at this level.

Bonus:

Partially unrelated, but still a good example of why science is hard:

HUGO (Human Genome Organisation) Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC), the body that names genes, has changed 27 genes to avoid being confused by Excel's default naming protocols.

For example, SEPT2 is the short name of a gene called Septin 2....

-Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates

Aug 2020, The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates