The PBS News Hour had a discussion last night on the recent study of alcohol consumption in men and incidence of heart attack. (It’s available in RealAudio from their website). As usual, the study (in the New England Journal of Medicine) was taken up by health journalists - particularly those on the HealthWatch local TV news segments - and the local stations were no exception. What’s remarkable is the controversy the study has caused. Previous studies have received media play, but since they suggested a connection between red wine and lower heart disease incidence, they tapped into bourgeois notions of the proper role of alcohol in the diet and caused not much of a stir. The current study, meanwhile, suggests that beer and hard liquor are just as effective in lowering heart disease risk.
Mind you, the critics of the journalists’ appropriation of the study are right: it’s irresponsible to take research studies as the basis of health “information” and as for the studies themselves, correlation does not equal causation, a lesson that should be taken to heart when assessing today’s released report that teenage marijuana use leads to future alcohol and drug problems. So often in the public discussion of health research – and maybe in the research itself, I don’t know - genetic explanations can be seen as independent variables, but somehow social causes are not.
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