Hiding in the Backwaters Just one more blog on the net.

Mostly useless bits of information

Beer may increase your risk of lung cancer but wine may lower it. In one study, "after smoking was discounted, drinking up to six beers per week increased the risk of lung cancer by 20 percent, and by 50 percent for seven or more beers consumed in the same period." In another study, "beer appeared harmful to men who did not eat fruit and vegetables regularly while men who drank wine saw their lung cancer risk drop by 40 percent, and women by 70 percent." Interpretations: 1) Beer causes cancer; wine prevents cancer. 2) Beer drinkers eat fried food, which causes cancer; wine drinkers eat vegetables, which prevent cancer. 3) Wine drinkers, being richer and better educated than beer drinkers, take better care of their bodies in lots of ways.¹

This is what is called useless information, also known as getting bit in the ass by extraneous variables. It seems highly unlikely that beer causes lung cancer. It seems much more likely that the lifestyle of someone who is consuming at least a beer a day includes other activities which increase the risk, for example how about where the beer is consumed? I don't have any hard figures to back it up, but it seems to me more beer by far is consumed in smoke filled bars than wine. Gee, might second hand smoke have something to do with it? Is there a difference between men who have a single beer every night after work and those who down a six pack on a Friday night? This is mildly interesting correlational information, but in the end not terribly useful.

Here's more even more useless information: The United States has a 50% divorce rate. This number is derived thusly: There were x number of marriages last year. There were y number of divorces last year. x = 2y, therefore we have a 50% divorce rate! Question: what do the people getting married last year have to do with the people getting divorced last year? Not a damn thing, save for those who got married and divorced last year. A more accurate measure of the divorce rate is to compare the number of existing marriages (60,000,000) with how many end in divorce in a given year(1,250,000). That number is about 2%. In other words you have a 98% chance of still being married at the end of any given year.² So much for marriage being a dying institution.

Interpretations: 1) Don't believe everything you read. 2) Unscrupulous people will crunch numbers and invent flimsy statistics that favor their arguments. 3)The conservative wingnut doomsdayers either have no idea what they are talking about, or are deliberately misleading the American public. You decide which is worse.