[oinfoalgo]

A few years ago, I really dug into the research to try to find things to convince my father to stop drinking but all the evidence I could find said the opposite.

That not drinking is what is dangerous for longevity. Completely not what I wanted to find or was expecting.

I think what is actually happening is we are becoming less of an evidence based society and more of a society based on sentiments. That is what has changed the past 20 years. It doesn't matter if the actual evidence says the opposite.

We "know" drinking is bad a priori, the evidence be damned.

[gwbas1c]

I've noticed quite a few studies where the author appears to prove their bias:

Pediatricians started asking about guns because someone "proved" that if there are guns in the house, children are more likely to have a gun injury. But, dig in just a little bit and no one differentiates between households where guns are secured and households where guns aren't.

My cardiologist who wagged her finger at me also brought up recent evidence about marijuana usage contributes to heart problems. I know those studies don't differentiate smoking vs edibles. Of course, smoking anything is going to have health problems; thus I'm going to conclude that the study confirms the authors' biases.

I suspect the same with studies about alcohol consumption: The authors may have some kind of bias. For example, what if drinking 120-proof spirits "neat" is likely to cause esophageal cancer, but everything else is safe?

That being said: We live longer than we used to. What used to kill us no longer does, so paying attention closer attention to things long-term effects of moderate alcohol consumption is more important than when we were more likely to at 45.