Alcohol linked to more cancers than thought, study finds

Alcohol linked to more cancers than thought, study finds
theguardian.com

The original publication is a meta-analysis of 860 meta-analyses. I thought this sounded a bit extreme, so I checked what John P.A. Ioannidis thought about meta-analyses because he often raises good points about trends in research and research ethics. Sure enough, his view is that meta-analyses are mass produced, redundant, misleading, and conflicted [1]!

One criticism of meta-analyses there, using anti-depressants as a case study: "the results of several meta‐analytic evaluations that addressed the effectiveness of and/or tolerability for diverse antidepressants showed that their ranking of antidepressants was markedly different. These studies had been conducted by some of the best meta‐analysts in the world, all of them researchers with major contributions in the methods of meta‐analysis and extremely experienced in its conduct. However, among 12 considered drugs, paroxetine ranked anywhere from first to tenth best and sertraline ranked anywhere from second to tenth best."

I would be reluctant to trust an observational study that examined the links between alcohol and cancer without examining the data further (many things can affect cancer, many "significant" results have small effect sizes, etc.). But to find that meta-analyses on the same topic don't reach the same conclusion? That's troubling. Is going even deeper into a meta-analysis of meta-analyses a good idea?

Edit: To justify my link is the correct original research, since another commenter claims otherwise, the Guardian article states "The Imperial study looked at data from 860 reviews of published studies, which explored the association between food and nutrient intake and the risk of either developing or dying from 11 different cancers." These same numbers of 11 cancers and 860 reviews is in [0].

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24861-8 [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27620683/

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Here is the press release by Imperial College about the study.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/187871/there-safe-level-alco...

It's also bad journalism when newspapers frequently misunderstand the original source completely or sensationalize one piece of the source completely out of context for extra clicks. But, there's not much we can do about that.

I hope we get more alternative media sources like Two Minute Papers (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg), who actually understand the subject matter, summarizing the latest research in various fields.