My great grandfather sat in a chair and drank from his handle of whiskey every day until his death also at 96. I had heard stories of workers on his farm not realize he was drinking during the work day until the tractor plowed through a neighboring fence causing them to look up in concern to see him passed out on the seat.

I unfortunately saw many in my family use his fortunate long life span, regardless of drink consumption, as an enabler to drink like that. Including myself, up until about 90 days ago.

Yes that is an anecdote. We get better info by looking at large groups of people and that is what the recommendation is based on.

Damn! Good thing he wasn't drinking 40 proof spirits, otherwise he would have died much sooner.

From Wikipedia: Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Yep, and there's always that one person who trots out that their grandmother smoked 2 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and lived to be 100. Anecdata is not data.

The statement is only interesting when you consider a sizeable population who regularly drank the % alcohol and lived to 96. It’s a classic case of selection bias

He was known to have said that it's the 4 percent water that's going to kill him.

These studies have clearly run into some local maximum... the trick is to blow past it!

should have gone for 98 percent alcohol, would have lived till 98 :-)