I think sloppy journalism plays a critical role in turning out misinformed citizens. Consider the following piece, which ran in the Los Angles Times on March 30th. At first glance, the title, Study takes healthful glow off wine; Heart benefits in question, suggests bad news for the wine industry (March 30, 2006 Thursday). My teetotaling father seized on this bit of “news” as final proof that drinking wine is bad. Now read the LA Times piece:
If you think a glass of wine in the evening is good for your heart, think again.
The long-held belief that moderate drinking reduces the risk of a heart attack is based on flawed data and is most likely wrong, according to a study to be released today.
A couple of glasses of wine aren’t going to hurt, the study found, but they aren’t going to help much either. Heavy drinking, of course, is unquestionably bad.
“Our results suggest that light drinking is a sign of good health and not necessarily its cause,” said epidemiologist Kaye Fillmore of the University of California-San Francisco School of Nursing. . .
Fillmore’s team identified 54 studies that examined the health effects of drinking. They found that most of the studies included significant numbers of people who had recently quit drinking among the group that abstained from alcohol.
Just seven of the studies had only long-term abstainers in that group – people who had never consumed alcohol or who had stopped drinking years earlier for reasons unrelated to their current health.
All seven of those studies showed no benefit from moderate drinking.
Now, look at the results described in the National Journal’s AMERICAN HEALTH LINE by someone who understands scientific methodology:
Studies conducted over the past 30 years that appeared to have found health benefits from moderate alcohol consumption had a fundamental flaw that led to mistaken conclusions, according to an analysis published on Thursday in an online edition of the journal Addiction Research and Theory, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. For the analysis, researchers from the University of California-San Francisco, the University of Victoria in Canada and Curtin University in Australia examined 54 studies on the relationship between alcohol consumption and health. According to the analysis, 47 of the studies had a flaw that led to the mistaken conclusion that moderate drinkers were healthier than nondrinkers. The flawed studies grouped former drinkers — who in most cases ceased drinking because of advanced age or health problems — with nondrinkers, which made that group appear less healthy in comparison with moderate drinkers, the analysis finds. The other seven studies did not group former drinkers with nondrinkers and found no significant difference in the health of moderate drinkers and nondrinkers, according to the analysis.
COMMENTS
Kaye Fillmore, a sociologist at the UCSF School of Nursing and lead study author, said, “This reopens the debate about the validity of the findings of a protective effect for moderate drinkers, and it suggests that studies in the future be better designed to take this potential error into account.” Fillmore said, “We are not proving anything. But the results are certainly suggestive” (Russell, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/30). She added, “Our results suggest that light drinking is a sign of good health and not necessarily its cause.”
Does the LA Times hire morons to report on scientific studies? Sure appears to be the case. How can they conclude that Fillmore’s study “takes the healthful glow off wine” when the actual results show that in the seven studies where a correct sampling methodology was employed there was no significant difference in the health of moderate drinkers and nondrinkers. However, even Fillmore concedes that, “Our results suggest that light drinking is a sign of good health”. Is the main stream press incapable of understanding nuance?
