Anyone turning on their computer first thing in the morning encounters a tidal wave of stories. As well as your regular newsfeeds (things we used to call newspapers and magazines) your service provider will unleash a torrent of clickbait, intriguing little stories designed to hook you in like a rookie haddock. And doubtless your more excitable and nervous friends will be bombarding you with snippets and scrapes from their own feeds, showing how we are going to hell in a handbasket and Enoch was right all along. How to sort the wheat from the chaff? Or to put it even more bluntly, which of the million or so articles are you really going to benefit from reading ?
Enter the cool, clear mind of Devi Sridhar, Professor of Public Health at Edinburgh University. Older readers will recall her as one of the saner media guides we knew during the long-ago Covid-19 pandemic. Today she pops up in the Guardian, advising us on a different topic Ostensibly it is about the Perils of Drink. Actually, it is an excellent guide to navigating these seas of information. And this is why we think it works;
1 Poses the question in a thoughtful and nuanced way and contrasts the issues of heavy drinking with moderate drinking
2 Thorough review of the evidence. Look carefully at the authority she cites. It’s the World Health Organisation. No they are not perfect; but are they likely, on balance to be more reliable than some cowboy internet site in Texas?
3 Back up studies she cites (NHS, Canadian Government) are more of the same Note how the hyperlinks are to equally reputable bodies
4 Uncontrolled studies and the Red wine myth The idea that this stuff might actually be good for you brought hope and comfort to millions. However, as the good professor notes
……., some of these studies didn’t control for the fact that red wine drinkers were more likely to be educated, wealthy, physically active, eat vegetables and have health insurance. In 2006, in a new analysis that controlled for health-affecting variables, the benefits of drinking red wine weren’t found. Since then, increasing evidence has shown that even one glass of wine a day increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart problems.
5 Who pays the piper? Watch carefully who funds studies any way. For, as she notes
The alcohol industry has been savvy here and funded studies that – surprise, surprise – show the benefits of moderate drinking. This is a lesson in why you should always look at who funds the study, and whether there’s a conflict of interest. The muddying of studies by commercial interests [is] a tactic that was also famously used by the tobacco industry ………
and finally.… The writer declares and interest She admits she is in the public health game and, being fallible, occasionally enjoys the odd tipple herself
Read a few less items, and read the ones you choose carefully. Always ask: who benefits? Does this tell me what I want to hear? Why has this been posted?
We will come back to this trope in due course.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/20/red-wine-drinking-alcohol-health-risks
#wine #critical thinking #professor devi sridhar #alcohol
Learning, Science and Society 