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Comment by teleforce | Hacker News Reader

> Last year, a major meta-analysis that re-examined 107 studies over 40 years came to the conclusion that no amount of alcohol improves health

Very politically correct conclusion statement and yet it's heavily attacked by the lobbyists. Imagine what will be the lobbyists response if the conclusion statement is that any amount of alcohol deteriorate health.

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Also comes across as a relatively useless metric. Even if right, which they likely are as far as I'm concerned, the statement says nothing about how much it deteriorates health (as opposed to improving) and besides that, for most people optimized health is hardly the goal of life.

To what degree can we even measure second or nth order effects of human behavior? This just seems like debating a perfectly spherical cow.

I think there’s some context around this. It used to be every once in a while there would be a study or news story about how moderate drinking would actually improve health (“Drinking may be good for you!”).

That has largely been debunked, though.

But do these studies incorporate the context and social effects of having an occasional drink, or just the alcohol itself? I’m guessing the latter.

It wouldn’t be surprising if an occasional glass of wine with friends leads to less stress and ultimately better health outcomes vs. avoiding the social occasion entirely.

Yeah, that's my line of thinking as well. All these isolated metrics on health are only useful to a degree imho.

Drinking has dropped off significantly. Unsurprising if there’s going to be backlash against people saying it’s not a good thing to do from the people who stand to make money from it.

Rather than just health, i wonder if outside prices have contributed. I no longer gobout and drink...easier to be in with a few cans.

IIRC it's mostly that a lot of younger adults never started drinking, for reasons that are varied and maybe still kind of unclear on a societal level. Previous drinkers quitting may be part of it but I haven't read much about that group being larger than in previous generations.

Specifically a lot of younger people are using cannabis, rather than alcohol, so alcohol use has declined in those populations.

Scientific research should optimize for factual correctness, not political correctness.

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