
Journalists confused an opinion piece for an alcohol-cancer study - legodt
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/that-time-a-bunch-of-journalists-confused-an-opinion-piece-for-a-study/
======
nchelluri
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.

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.

~~~
quantumhobbit
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. When all news sources are crappy,
I will stick to whatever is free and at the top of my feed. Maybe this is why
pay walls are a failing strategy, none of the pay walled papers have a good
enough reputation for quality to justify the expense in both money and
convenience.

For example Apple used to have such a reputation for quality that the apple
tax was something people gladly paid. They still do, but around 2007 this was
even more obvious. Remember cut and paste on the iPhone, Apple's reputation
for quality was such that millions of customers happily waited for basic
functionality. Any other company would have had to rush out cut and paste, but
Apple could take their time and get it right.

I don't think there is anything similar in journalism. No one says to
themselves "That looks like a good story, but I'll just wait a few days and
read about it in the New York Times." We can blame the consumer's impatience,
but I think we should blame journalists for not cultivating such a reputation
for quality.

It would be really hard and probably lose money for years, but I want to see a
paper try that approach. Have an explicit and well know strategy of ,"we
aren't going to be first with any stories, but everything you read here is
well researched almost certainly true". It would take some time but just
imagine what a paper with that kind of reputation could accomplish and the
sort of loyalty it could have from customers.

~~~
crdoconnor
>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

They do but quality is expensive to produce and consumers can't always
recognize it consistently.

~~~
6502nerdface
Yeah, one of the problems here is that speed is easier to measure than
quality, and there's a natural bias to optimize for what you can measure.

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elgabogringo
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.

~~~
jsprogrammer
I've heard that actual scientists and economists are just a type of
professional writer, as they must "publish or perish". I've even heard that in
those publications, there is a push towards constructing narratives and
telling stories.

Do you know of scientists or economists who aren't paid to write that I can
read from?

~~~
smt88
> _scientists and economists are just a type of professional writer_

While true, they're only supposed to write things that can be independently
reproduced and verified. If they have to layer narratives on top of their work
to get people to care, I don't see any harm in that as long as it doesn't
stray outside of the lines of fact.

A problem I've seen myself is that the original scientists aren't always the
ones marketing their work. There's someone else (a layperson) at the
university paid to do that, and they will often make claims that aren't
substantiated by the original research.

~~~
WillPostForFood
But better not to confuse economists and scientists.

~~~
chestervonwinch
Don't economists empirically test mathematical models of the economy? How is
this not science?

~~~
luckluckgoosed
Economists work with data about people's behaviors. Their results don't remain
constant, and vary depending on social or cultural trends. So they do social
sciences (which is not actually science). It used to be called "social
studies" in your grade school.

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1ris
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.

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.

~~~
chestervonwinch
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...](http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet#q2)

~~~
1ris
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's often before 40, I would dearly.

I know that alcohol increases the risk for prostate cancer. But prostate
cancer typically starts at very high age and is usually just a minor hassle.
The typical infected person dies of something else and has a usual life
expectancy.

How to these factors from 1.5 to 3 affect my mortality? Should I care? I want
to say something like say "I'm drinking $n drinks a week, and in order to
compensate that I stop doing other things with a similar risk".

~~~
ekianjo
Cancer is not uncommon, 1 person out of 3 gets it if they live long enough.

~~~
vonmoltke
"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.

~~~
ekianjo
Alright, how about that then ?

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172907/table/tb...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172907/table/tbl2/)

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Hello71
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.

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percept
"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.""

(Wikipedia, citing
[http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/Classifications...](http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsGroupOrder.pdf))

------
dang
The 'study' was discussed yesterday at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142140),
but this is more a media story, so we can treat it as a separate topic.

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nezt
Here's a study correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of lymphoma:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22465910)

Here's one correlating ethanol usage with a lower risk of kidney cancer:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049576/)

Here's a study linking ethanol consumption with a reduced risk of ALS:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22791740)

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.

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'.

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.

------
jasonjei
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.)

So what is it? Is moderate drinking helping? Or is it the lifestyle of
moderation helping?

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]

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]

Drinking causes cancer but red wine is known to have anticancer properties?
Abstainers in one study have higher risk factors than moderate drinkers?

[0] [http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
prevention/risk/al...](http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet)

~~~
HillaryBriss
I think it's unclear that the amount of resveratrol found in a few glasses of
red wine is truly therapeutic.

Also, it's possible to get resveratrol from red grapes and peanuts in amounts
roughly comparable to that found in red wine.

[http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-
factors/phytochemical...](http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-
factors/phytochemicals/resveratrol#food-sources)

------
thefastlane
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.

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sigdoubt
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.

> 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.”

~~~
lostlogin
The data showing that moderate drinkers had a lower risk of cardiovascular
disease was flawed. In the study the abstainers had more CVD risk factors than
the drinkers, making any comparisons that were made invalid.

------
dahart
> 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.

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.

John Oliver had fun with it recently:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw)

------
known
What does alcohol do to your body and brain? [http://qz.com/696693/what-does-
alcohol-actually-do-to-your-b...](http://qz.com/696693/what-does-alcohol-
actually-do-to-your-body-and-brain/)

------
wang_li
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:
[http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698)

~~~
tstactplsignore
How is this the same thing? The JAMA article is a factually correct article
clearly presenting a specific viewpoint. There are pieces like that in
journals all the time, and there should be.

The original post here is talking about the misrepresentation of what is a
viewpoint / opinion piece as a scientific study in the mainstream news media.
They have nothing to do with each other.

~~~
wang_li
It's a one sided opinion piece that completely fails to be objective about the
success of the ACA. Additionally, it wasn't peer reviewed, so it's a stretch
to claim that it's factually accurate.

[http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-berezow-
hartsfiel...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-berezow-hartsfield-
obama-jama-20160718-snap-story.html)

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kevin_thibedeau
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.

~~~
summarite
I think you should look at the background papers before making such a bold and
unwarranted dismissal. Any researcher worth their salt will make sure to at
least try to exclude other factors, and any good peer reviewer and journal
editor will point out if this is missing. So if papers consistently find this
link chances are very good it's there.

~~~
helloworld
Actually, this might be an example of the "healthy user" bias in observational
studies.[1] Although epidemiologists do try hard to include all of the
relevant variables in their analyses, there are likely unidentified individual
differences (perhaps including personality and lifestyle) that distinguish
people with better health outcomes.

That's why double-blind, randomized, controlled trials provide more compelling
evidence of cause and effect.

[1] Do we really know what makes us healthy? NY Times Magazine, Sept. 16,
2007.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t....](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html)

