511
Alcohol is the root of 62 diseases and a partial cause of dozens more
(hsph.harvard.edu)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
511 points (100.0% liked)
science
27636 readers
158 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
You cannot compare a bullet passing through a heart - an entirely physical process - with diseases from cancer - complex biochemical processes. This is statistically and logically wrong - like comparing apples and oranges, although your example is even more wrong. Apples and oranges are at least fruits, but heart and cancer?
The entire field of ontology is complex in itself. I agree that alcohol CAN (!) increase the chance to get cancer, but - again - Paracelsus plays an imminent role, which is even not considered! Also possible interactions with all the other environmental, psychological etc variables are missing. This diminishes considerably the value of this study.
If I have time and the motivation, I could dig deeper into the design. But it seems to have remarkable flaws and thus makes it in the context of medicine and science a pub, which should be considered with caution!
The more you write about science, statistics, and causality, the more obvious it becomes that your confidence is doing the heavy lifting where methodological understanding should be.
Discouraging is only that there are still people like you around who think they have a clue, while after just a few comments it becomes obvious that they know very little about the subject they are talking about. Mentioning Occam's Razor, a basic concept, which you even managed to misinterpret, was clear evidence of that. Even worse, instead of engaging in a technical discussion like someone genuinely interested in science would do, you increasingly turned the conversation into amateur psychoanalysis about my ego. That told me everything I needed to know. You are free to continue writing comments, but I won't be answering them. If you consider that a win, that's entirely up to you.