[ale] OT (way out there): switching from beer to wine....

Charles Shapiro charles.shapiro at nubridges.com
Tue Nov 12 15:47:09 EST 2002


Nope. The people who drank no wine are not a sufficient control. True,
they're people (as opposed to, say, rabbits -- who also drink no wine
and suffer from little old-age dementia). But they clearly differ in
many relevant factors from the wine-drinkers. 

The fallacy here is the same as the one in the claim that sunlight
causes heart disease, since more people die from heart disease in sunny
states (such as Florida) than in cooler states. Control for the number
of retirees there, of course, and the link goes away.

This is what makes experimental science so tricky, especially with human
subjects. The ideal experiment would take a thousand sets of identical
twins at birth, separate them randomly into 2 groups, make one set drink
wine and another not, and then compare outcomes 70 years later. That
would give you an unambiguous answer. The claim in the CNN article falls
so far short of this standard that, until some kind of real study is
actually done, it's near useless as a guide to modifying behavior. 

Wine drinkers tend to have higher incomes than beer drinkers and
non-drinkers,
according to this highly biased source 
http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Daily/News/0,1145,1812,00.html
That alone brings in a big cluster of health and diet factors which have
little to do with wine drinking, but a lot to do with health in old age.
Off hand, I'd rather earn more money than change my drinking habits.
 
Of course, I'm a homebrewer, so I am pretty rabid about my beer already.

-- CHS

On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 14:58, Kilroy, Chris wrote:
> certainly you should always take this sort of thing with some skepticism.
> 
> but there was a control group in this study:
> "People who had just a glass of wine a day had a lower risk of dementia than people who drank no wine at all,"  
> 
> the people who drank no wine are the control.
> 
> this was published in a respected peer-reviewed journal,  and news articles often don't represent scientific papers with the degree of accuracy that one would always prefer, no doubt about it.
> 
> correlation is not causation of course.  
> 
> This article is by no means proof that red wine consumption will lead to the preservation of cognitive function over the course of an individual's life.  But there is a growing body of knowledge that does strongly suggest a variety of benefits to moderate consumption of red wine,  protection from LDL oxidation and artherosclerosis for instance.
> 
> skepticism is always good though when it comes to analyzing scientific findings!  =)
> 
> 
> 
>  
> ->
> ->Better watch out about studies like these. Wine drinking may be
> ->associated with lower rates of dementia. That does not mean that it
> ->causes those lowered rates, as the story itself hints. The real cause
> ->may well have little to do with anything in the wine itself.
> ->
> ->Two crucial words missing from this report:
> ->
> ->controlled study
> ->
> ->That means a study which has a matched control group, so you can
> ->actually verify that the one factor you're varying between the two
> ->groups is the factor causing your observed result.
> ->
> ->-- CHS
> ->
> ->
> ->On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 14:20, John Wells wrote:
> ->> Stories like this
> ->> 
> ->(http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/conditions/11/11/wine.dementia
> .reut/index.html)
> >  make me think hard about giving up beer and switching to wine.  After
> > all, a man can't take any chances when it comes to his thinking cap.
> > 
> > <AA FLAME BAIT>Yes, I enjoy beer on a weekly basis</AA FLAME BAIT> with
> > varying frequency, but have also enjoyed wine in the past and would
> > consider trying the admittedly difficult departure from my good friend
> > beer.
> > 
> > However, I'm no wine expert by any means, and really don't know how to
> > identify a wine that provides at least some quality for costs that
> > approach beer's affordabilty.  I enjoy both white and red wines and would
> > like to find a reasonably affordable, palatable, non-gut-rotting vintage
> > in each.
> > 
> > Any wine connoisseurs on the list?  Can you point me in the right direction?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > John
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ---
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> > 
> 
> 
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