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.
Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
51–60 of 96 posts
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
About 3 drinks per day puts you from 1.5 to 3 times more likely to develop various cancers, according to: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...
Yes, this is what I'm referring to. This information is completly meaningless to me. How does a 1.5 to 3 times higher cancer risk affect my mortality? A 100 times elevated risk in extreme uncommon diseases is absoluty irrelevant, but a 10 percent increase to get something very common is quite important. Likewise is the age when these disease typically break out. If it's typically not before 85, I wouldn't mind. If it…
Cancer is not uncommon, 1 person out of 3 gets it if they live long enough.
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not just sugary yeast water. The first step of alcohol metabolism is conversion to acetaldehyde, which is then processed further into acetic acid. Acetaldehyde is very much a carcinogen (and its also directly DNA damaging). The science is super clear. We even have this control population called "east asians". The "asian flush" phenomenon is the result of hyperactive ADH1 (which converts ethanol to acetaldehyde) a…
Do East Asians have a higher likelihood of types of cancer that could be linked to alcohol use? I've never seen that claim, but it would be interesting if it were true.
Japanese and south koreans are known to have the highest rates in the world of stomach cancer. And they happen to be East Asian and drink often.
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is what I'm referring to. This information is completly meaningless to me. How does a 1.5 to 3 times higher cancer risk affect my mortality? A 100 times elevated risk in extreme uncommon diseases is absoluty irrelevant, but a 10 percent increase to get something very common is quite important. Likewise is the age when these disease typically break out. If it's typically not before 85, I wouldn't mind. If it…
Cancer is not uncommon, 1 person out of 3 gets it if they live long enough.
"Cancer" is not a single disease that can be lumped together like this. It is a large group of different diseases that share a similar mechanism (cell mutation and unchecked growth). Without information about what specific cancers are involved, it may be as the GP said: an elevated risk of a rare cancer.
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#55I 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. Arch…
It is a race to the bottom as long as we value speed over quality. It is a shame too because I think consumers would really prefer quality over speed for software and news, I know I would. But consumption of these things isn't a rational deliberation by the consumer, but a reflex click or don't click. Hence the proliferation of click bait headlines and bs startup promises. I think the key is reputation and branding.…
I agree that none of the pay walled papers are good enough to justify the expense. But this was happening pre-internet as well. I used to buy newspapers occasionally when dining out alone. At best, they were somewhat cumbersome to read and provided possibly half a meal's worth of reading mildly interesting stories (to put it mildly. Newspaper subscriptions were never worth it - and this feeling hasn't changed since they went online. The future of journalism worries me a bit since the current model seems to be failing. Folks need consistently reputable sources to get news about events without a monetary barrier to read it. Otherwise, we wind up with folks believing the "truth" in what seems no better than a supermarket tabloid.
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#56I'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. 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 curia…
I'm more or less lifelong teetotal, but about 4 years ago, I started considering light drinking based off of widely popular reports of health benefits of the occasional glass of wine and some all-cause mortality reduction studies.
Given that I wasn't sure how well the media had reported these and if I was either motivated enough of or enough of a scientist to evaluate research directly, I decided to ask doctors if I should do this. In short, to provide me with curial end-user friendly information.
So I've pretty much asked most MD I've seen since, five total. The responses fell into two categories:
* "Eh, if you already drink, it's probably OK, but for heavens sake, of all the new things to take up for health benefits, one could do so much better. Get your exercise, diet, dental health, stress levels, and sleep quality dialed in, then maybe statins, then maybe a glass of wine for health."
* "We never advise people to start. There are too many risks. If you enjoy alcohol, be responsible and moderate, but it the opposite of an asset to your health."
Of course, doctors aren't perfect, I have a limited sample of them, and I may not be summarizing their response correctly. It's probably best for most people to ask doctors directly along with conducting what review of medical literature they can if they're up to it.
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancer is not uncommon, 1 person out of 3 gets it if they live long enough.
"Cancer" is not a single disease that can be lumped together like this. It is a large group of different diseases that share a similar mechanism (cell mutation and unchecked growth). Without information about what specific cancers are involved, it may be as the GP said: an elevated risk of a rare cancer.
Alright, how about that then ?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172907/table/tb...
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
stop and think for a minute about what you are saying. Did you go to college, and did you learn anything? High school? Those books are all written by academics; very few of the smarter better informed people you're reading could write a single textbook without spending a stupid amout of time studying the field first. Nothing wrong with you being interested in reading what smart, well-informed people have to say on a…
I wasn't talking about formal academic writing in this post. I was talking about academics.
what I wrote was also about academics, taught by academics who also write academic papers. They're the same people. You don't have to read them
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#59I 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. Arch…
Block all ads and (try to) burn the whole fetid industry to the ground.
Re: Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study
#60I 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. Arch…
I know what you mean.
But I think in part it's just because things don't stay 'in focus' for very long any more. In the news world, one or two days is now all it takes for stuff to be seen as 'old hat', with the timing going down to maybe about two or three hours in the gaming world.
So for journalists, it's more profitable/attention grabbing to get anything out 'right now' that it is to do the research and delay the piece.
It might also be because the first news site to post about something interesting can often claim to be the 'source', even if they're really just writing about something that's already been posted elsewhere. Most journalists don't actually check for the original page or paper, they just reference the site they heard it discussed on.
So being quick can also get a bunch of equally rushed sites linking back to your work as if it was the original source. That can be awfully good for your page rank or whatever...
Either way, it's almost always better (for the journalist/news site/media source) to be the first to print something than to cover it most accurately. That's just how the increasingly quick news cycle works online.