Hacker News Reader

Comment by newswriter99 | Hacker News Reader

>Abstainers were mainly women, had lower education and physical activity, were obese, and had a higher prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors, all associated with an increased risk of dementia,11,12 which could explain the differences; however, adjustment for confounding factors did not alter the findings.

This is why interactive data visualization is so important. People need to be able to adjust the results of data to fit them, otherwise the margin of error and deviation from the "average" will be so great, findings are virtually useless to an individual.

View on HN

The moment I read 1-14 units a week that must be wine I thought: “well, that’s every intellectual that I know”.

I haven’t done any research, and all my knowledgeable is anecdotal. But I did work in a dementia ward as a caretaker for 5 years as a student job, and keeping your mind busy throughout life seems like a good idea.

I was thinking that 1 unit = 1 standard drink but if the study is using the UK definition of units, the 1-14/week range is actually much lower than the average alcohol consumption among the academic/intellectual types I know. To put the 1-14 figure into real world terms, 10 UK units is about equal to a single bottle of 14% ABV wine. And to put that in perspective, on multiple occasions I've witnessed a table of Oxford dons drink the equivalent of 10-20 units over lunch!

Granted, academics and intellectuals in the UK are more likely (in my admittedly anecdotal experience) to be functional alcoholics than elsewhere. But still, if I were trying to estimate the median consumption among the few dozen people I know with advanced degrees, I'd say it'd fall more in the range of 2-3 bottles of wine a week or equivalent amounts of beer, which is well into the "excessive" zone in this study. Unfortunately, I seem to fall into that group as well :(

> Granted, academics and intellectuals in the UK are more likely (in my admittedly anecdotal experience) to be functional alcoholics than elsewhere.

Anecdata: Back when I was a barkeeper, I've seen so. much. drinking. with Brits - and ordinary soccer fans at that, not (at least not visibly) academics. They regularly drank all other guests, including Slivovitz-trained Croats and Serbs, under the tables... and were still standing firmly, not stumbling around.

Going into study abroad in Wales, as an American, I had this notion that Europeans were more sophisticated and responsible drinkers.

Naaaah.

We're more trained, that's all. In Germany you can legally start at 16 with beer and wine, and the hard stuff is available at 18. Both in ordinary supermarkets, gas stations, wherever - the only thing that's forbidden is automated vending machines.

Compared to the US where the age limit is 21 in many places, well that's 5 years of drinking practice aka alcohol tolerance...

Only for the people who actually respect drinking age laws, which afaict is not that many.

It seems to me your comment applies to both sides of the atlantic.

Well, ok. I can only speak for my side of the ocean, and not very authoritatively at that. :) Is it really widespread, though, for people in Europe to start seriously drinking before 16?

I hear you. I thought American university students drank a lot, legally and illegally. Then I went to study abroad in London for a semester, and made a lot of English friends.

Well, now. Compared to my friends in the UK, I was a consumption amateur. Even though for a time it seemed like I was subsisting on lager, I had to work to keep up during pub crawls. And my entire ancestry originates in the UK, so it was all cultural not genetic!

I agree, but I don’t think it’s true for the majority in the mid part of life. Almost all my friends are 40-50, have long educations, many are still building on them, and the common consumption is two bottles a wine s week.

One Friday, one Saturday, shared with the wife/husband, which is 10-14 units a week.

Most of the functional alcoholic academic types don’t go that high until later in life, probably because alcohol and having young children don’t really mix too well.

Still completely anecdotal though. It’d be really interesting to see a comparison of this group of people and alcohol consumption. Because other research has already shown that a long education postpones dementia.

Relevant, from The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

OTOH, the link is weird enough that my guess is that it's hiding other factors... So mapping to your own experience isn't likely to tell you much. (Unless you are a large aggregate of other people.)

Personally, I would prefer that an expert in statistical and scientific methods provides some analysis and conclusions.

There’s a good reason why “data mining” is often described as “data dredging”. While browsing through data, it’s all too easy to find the conclusions that you want to find.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

> however, adjustment for confounding factors did not alter the findings.

Let me guess: adjusting for confounding factors means throwing away most of the data, so that all that remains is a small group of abstainers and non-abstainers who are similar in all regards except for the abstinence.

Problem is, there may be more than one way to do that, with different results; then it's possible to choose a way of reducing the data to fit the desired hypothesis.

The only honest way to fix a confounding bias in the data is to re-do the study with a properly randomized sample of subjects.

> Let me guess: adjusting for confounding factors means throwing away most of the data

The usual method is statistical adjustment for the contributions attributable to other causes, not throwing out data.

Are you seriously suggesting a study in which people are randomly assigned people to drinking conditions for decades? That is perposterous.

Edit: To be clear, assignment to drinking conditions and following them over decades is unrealistic, would have problems with participant compliance, and is probably unethical.

I recently saw a study where adults were assigned to drink 1 drink per day or 0 drinks per day, for years, with the drinks subsidized.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com