5.4 Alcohol and Mortality
Overview
- Well-regarded study A.M. Wood et al.(2018) studied effects of alcohol on all-causes mortality
- more than 200 authors
- 600k people observed
- Published in medical journal, The Lancet
- Study used to set drinking guidelines
Study Findings
- No benefit to even small amounts of alcohol consumption
- risks increase at about 1 drink per day
Book Exercise
- List five things that would be a cause for or related to someone drinking
- List five things that would cause someone to die
- Any overlap between the lists?
Example Answers
- Causes of drinking - risk seeking behavior, which may cause other behaviors like smoking
- Causes of mortality - numerous indicators of bad-health are acceptable, smoking, risk-taking, dangerous job - Both lists: smoking
Issues with Causal Explanation
- Items on both lists can be classified as an alternate explanation for results
- What about non-drinkers?
- May have higher mortality due to being sick
- May have high proportion of recovering alcoholics
Controls in Study to Address Alternate Explanations
- Limited to drinkers only
- Statistical adjustments: smoking status, age, gender, health indicators like BMI and diabetes
Lingering Issues
- Risk-seeking behavior in general not controlled for. Smoking is just one example.
- Removed all non-drinkers, not just sick and recovering alcoholics
- What if already sick people still drink, but just less than average drinkers?
- Using methodology in paper, Chris Auld read the study, and then took the same methods as in the original paper and used them to “prove” that drinking more causes)used data to “prove” drinking causes you to become a man
