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Considering that beer is the national drink in Germany, where beer is cheaper than a glass of water, coffee or soda, you'd think Germans would be dying off from gastric cancer right and left.

I do know one German who did, though. She was my wife's aunt. She was a health nut and never drank any alcohol (but did drink her own piss) (yes, really). Died at 68 from gastric cancer.
 
BierHerr said:
Considering that beer is the national drink in Germany, where beer is cheaper than a glass of water, coffee or soda, you'd think Germans would be dying off from gastric cancer right and left.

I do know one German who did, though. She was my wife's aunt. She was a health nut and never drank any alcohol (but did drink her own piss) (yes, really). Died at 68 from gastric cancer.

Well piss is the liquid your body doesn't want so drinking it doesn't seem like the best thing to do.
 
Considering beer reduces the likelihood of most psychological diseases, heart diseases, most cancers, the developing of kidney stones, bacteria infections in the stomach--the fact that consuming large amounts of alcohol, within one sitting, increasing the risk of one particular cancer hardly seems like it needs to be considered at all.

BTW: This information on the increased risk of this type of cancer has been known for years now.
 
Just to clear something up, a 75% increased risk doesn't mean that 75% of the drinkers will get gastic cancer. It means that if there risk was say 1% that it increases by 75% up to a whopping 1.75%. And I'm sure the latent risk of gastric cancer is less than 1% anyways, I was just using it as an easy statistic to increase by 75%.
 
hahaha, that would suck! But alas, that 700% means you're 8 times more likely to be affected. If the normal likelihood is 1 in 100, and the new rate is 700% higher, that means 8 in 100. I know it sounds weird that 700 equates to 8 times, but "100% more likely" means "twice as likely", so 100% = twice as likely. 200% = thrice as likely. Etc.

so you are saying it's a percentage based off a percentage? So for example purposes (please excuse if some numbers are off, I'm just trying to understand this whole statistics thing), let's say that 100% of something is 1 in 100 billion. so magically, if 2 in 100 billion occur, it's now 200%? If 1000 in 100 billion occur, does that now make it 1000%?

It seems like an awful way to easily mislead people into thinking that the chances of "said thing" happening is greatly increased, because before only one person in 100 billion developed the cancer, but in the second test 7 people in 100 billion developed the cancer, making the chances 700%. Seems like a very slight flaw in testing can cause HUGE differences in results.
 
so you are saying it's a percentage based off a percentage? So for example purposes (please excuse if some numbers are off, I'm just trying to understand this whole statistics thing), let's say that 100% of something is 1 in 100 billion. so magically, if 2 in 100 billion occur, it's now 200%? If 1000 in 100 billion occur, does that now make it 1000%?

It seems like an awful way to easily mislead people into thinking that the chances of "said thing" happening is greatly increased, because before only one person in 100 billion developed the cancer, but in the second test 7 people in 100 billion developed the cancer. Seems like a very slight flaw in testing can cause HUGE differences in results.

Welcome to learning to lie with statistics! It's called relative vs. absolute risk increases.
 
so you are saying it's a percentage based off a percentage? So for example purposes (please excuse if some numbers are off, I'm just trying to understand this whole statistics thing), let's say that 100% of something is 1 in 100 billion. so magically, if 2 in 100 billion occur, it's now 200%? If 1000 in 100 billion occur, does that now make it 1000%?

It seems like an awful way to easily mislead people into thinking that the chances of "said thing" happening is greatly increased, because before only one person in 100 billion developed the cancer, but in the second test 7 people in 100 billion developed the cancer, making the chances 700%. Seems like a very slight flaw in testing can cause HUGE differences in results.

It doesn't make the chances 700%, it increases the chance by 700%. It's not a misleading statistic, it's math. For a 700% increase you could easily say that it is an 8 times increase in risk. The reason why they state it in a percentage increase is for numbers that don't work out as simply. To use their study as an example, a 75% increased risk would be 1.75 or 1 3/4 times more likely than normal. If they would use a decimal or fraction then the same people who don't understand the percentage increase would likely still be confused.
 
It doesn't make the chances 700%, it increases the chance by 700%. It's not a misleading statistic, it's math. For a 700% increase you could easily say that it is an 8 times increase in risk. The reason why they state it in a percentage increase is for numbers that don't work out as simply. To use their study as an example, a 75% increased risk would be 1.75 or 1 3/4 times more likely than normal. If they would use a decimal or fraction then the same people who don't understand the percentage increase would likely still be confused.

True, but no can deny that study authors commonly switch between relative and absolute risk reporting depending upon their bias.
 
It doesn't make the chances 700%, it increases the chance by 700%. It's not a misleading statistic, it's math. For a 700% increase you could easily say that it is an 8 times increase in risk. The reason why they state it in a percentage increase is for numbers that don't work out as simply. To use their study as an example, a 75% increased risk would be 1.75 or 1 3/4 times more likely than normal. If they would use a decimal or fraction then the same people who don't understand the percentage increase would likely still be confused.

I understand what you are saying, but it still very misleading because you don't know what the numbers were for the testing. By saying your chances of winning the lottery are increased 100%, most people would think that they WOULD be winning the lottery. But the secret number that's never told, is only 1 in 1 trillion people will win the lottery, but now it's increased to 2 in 1 trillion people, so your actual odds are only 1 in 500 billion....i think... if my math is correct...
 
I understand what you are saying, but it still very misleading because you don't know what the numbers were for the testing. By saying your chances of winning the lottery are increased 100%, most people would think that they WOULD be winning the lottery. But the secret number that's never told, is only 1 in 1 trillion people will win the lottery, but now it's increased to 2 in 1 trillion people, so your actual odds are only 1 in 500 billion....i think... if my math is correct...

You numbers are right. The problem is that researchers don't really have a better way of stating their findings. Maybe it's the articles authors that needed to take more time explaining what those #s mean.
 
Studies like this are almost always reported as the percent increase of occurrence. It's the bigger number, so it makes for a more exciting story.

Writing that heavy beer drinkers increase their risk of some disease from .005% to .00875% would be boring. (just an example, I have no idea what the control percent chance of this specific disease is)
 
True, but no can deny that study authors commonly switch between relative and absolute risk reporting depending upon their bias.

Meh, I'm not sure it's bias so much as the authors ran a logistic regression model and reporting as "% increase" is fairly standard in that case, esp in cancer research. A OR of around 6 that was significant will definitely get published...

Great point about H. pylori MI longhorn, did you find the presentation? I would be very curious to see if they controlled for this factor in the model and it should absolutely be sent back for further review if they did not.

Redcoat or rebel, please quit being ridiculous. Antiquity was not some magical disease-free era. People got cancer and died from it, even back then (carcinoma is a Greek word meaning crab-like, was coined by Romanized Greek physicians back in the day). A notable Persian queen (Atossa) most likely died of breast cancer, and breast cancer was common enough in Ancient Egypt to merit mention by Imhotep in the 17th Century BCE. (I even haz sources! Mukherjee S, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Scribner, New York, 2010. pp. 40-42). Prevalence of H. pylori has also dropped precipitously in the US over the past 80 years so "everyone" does not have it (more like 26-44%, depending on age and race) (Source!) Sorry to go on a rant I'm just doing my part against pseudoscience :D.

Generally I think that the study is interesting, but would need to be confirmed in at least one other population independently. Without information on extraneous risk factors and confounders (which MSNBC conveniently failed to provide...) it's fairly impossible to evaluate the information. I'll keep on drinking beer/homebrew :mug:
 
As George Carlin pointed out, saliva, too, causes cancer, but only when swallowed in small quantities over a long period of time.
 
Correlation masquerading as causation.

Quoted for truth.

How is it that we ended up with 'science' that no longer follows the same scientific method people are taught in grade school (or at least used to be).

Now we get Al Gore prancing around in front of some correlating charts, telling us he knows all of the answers. We get observations, and are told that we should just connect the dots, after all who would be so stupid as to need an actual experiment to demonstrate what 'everyone' should be smart enough to see.

Science has become the religion of the 21st century, and our preachers demand their alms. So let us build them a Large Hadron Collider, so that they may bestow their Ipods and Priuses (or is it Priui) upon us.

Once they make their new observations, they can interpret our new reality, as surely as light is waves through the ether.

Sorry, its been a long day....
 
Just to clear something up, a 75% increased risk doesn't mean that 75% of the drinkers will get gastic cancer. It means that if there risk was say 1% that it increases by 75% up to a whopping 1.75%. And I'm sure the latent risk of gastric cancer is less than 1% anyways, I was just using it as an easy statistic to increase by 75%.

I totally misread the article before I posted on this thread. D'oh!:drunk:
 
gratus fermentatio said:
I already gave up cigarettes & hookers, I ain't giving up beer.

Cigarettes okay but, hookers and beer their is no reason to quit! those go so good together:)
 
I like that the alcohol in by beer, but not in wine or liquor is what causes this. How is the same chemical all of a sudden different if the sugar comes from grape, grain or..wait, grain...?

Not sure about the wine, but I know for an absolute fact that distilling liquor makes it so concentrated that your body chooses to ignore the presence of the ethanol.
 
About 30 years ago, a study showed that eating raw onions prevented baldness. My father loved raw onions (he ate them almost daily in salad), and his forefront met the back of his neck when he was 19.

That article is just a typical sample of a news company using anything they can find to fill air time, or, in this case, space.
So they made a study with a 500000 people sample size. Impressive.
What's the incidence? How many of those 500000 people did actually have gastric cancer? 10? 10000?
If you follow the numbers provided in that same article, in the US, with a 300 million people population, there's 11000 (to make it a round number) gastric cancer cases a year. If we use the same proportions, a 521000 people sample size would give you 19.1 gastric cancer cases (let's say 20), definitely NOT an adequate sample size to draw any valid conclusions from.
And then we have other variables. Diet? Race? Smoking habits? Other drinking habits? Lifestyle?
And, to boot, you have that the same article contradicts itself. At the beginning, it says beer drinkers have a 75% higher risk for gastric cancer, and later on it cites the risk being 65% higher.

All in all, a stupid, unscientific way to waste people's time, and to spread even more nonsense. Like we need that...
 
Sure 75%more than FA is still FA but this is just one type. Daily drinking more that a unit or two is linked to others as well from breast to liver. I think we're not designed to drink booze daily no matter how much we like it. This isn't the first study to link beer with colon c. I don't think they have an agenda it's just what they found. I wish drinking 3 pints a day was really good for you, really I do. Yes genetics food bad luck and all sorts have a role to play and a safe life can be a dull one. In the middle lies reason.
 
Not to be a conspiracy nut here, but I would be willing to be that somewhere at some point in time, due to "research" like this, beer could end up on a restricted list that is dictated by health care policy as provided by some people.

And the "research" says it should be so.

Or, to take a different direction, I bet the wine industry doesn't like the attention the beer industry is getting now and may have paid for such "research" to be conducted.

Either way, I ain't buying it. With studies like this, thousands of years of history tend to disagree with the "experts".
 
Math is fun

You can make anything sound as good or as bad as you want.

Lets say GI (Gastrointestinal) cancer happens in 1 out of 1000 people ( I don't know what the numbers, I've currently RDWHAHB a bit tonight, and I don't care to)

But lets say 1 in 1,000 get some form of GI cancer..

A "75%" increase means 1.75 people per 1,000 will develop some form of GI cancer.

Is it a big increase? Yeah.. Its almost double.. Is it gonna affect *you* well, really, statistically, no. The chance was so slim, now its a bit less than slim..

I hate hearing stuff like "75% higher chance of cancer" as it sounds so much more horrible than it is..

You wanna drink homebrew?.. Drink homebrew..

Worried about health? then dont drink..

Its really easy, if you think about it..

Just remember to put the fear-mongering numbers in perspective.
 
Not worried, life in general causes cancer. Just drink your beer and enjoy your time on this planet.
 
I think the marijuana industry has sponsored this study and will try and use is to promote a healthy alternative to drinking. After all it did come from MSNBC. They are either high or stupid. Same junk science that had been used for years. If you own a gun you are more likely to be shot and everyone around you is in danger
 
I think the marijuana industry has sponsored this study and will try and use is to promote a healthy alternative to drinking. After all it did come from MSNBC. They are either high or stupid. Same junk science that had been used for years. If you own a gun you are more likely to be shot and everyone around you is in danger

Not just MSNBC. I think most main stream media, regardless of who it is tends to go off on the deep end for hysteria reporting.

After living in Japan and seeing the laughable job almost all stations did with reporting on the earthquake, I tend not to believe anyone for anything.

If I wasn't trying to drop weight as fast as I could I would crack open and nice 22oz of homebrew and re-read the article.
 
Can't drink - Can't drive - Death is everywhere.

"Polluted Freeway Air Causes Brain Damage in Mice"

Good thing we aren't mice.

How is it that we ended up with 'science' that no longer follows the same scientific method people are taught in grade school (or at least used to be).

Yes! Hypothesis driven research. Instead we have "researchers" sitting around all day putting huge amounts of data (the method of obtaining this data is suspect to me) into programs and trying to find trends and correlations. At the end they will say something like "this groundbreaking discovery motivates further research into this topic." And that is great and it does, but no one ever does the follow up research because that would require proper controls, removal of confounding conditions, etc. and honestly above all else, it would cost A LOT of money.

I honestly think that a lot of this is come from the "dilution" of medical research. NIH has more and more money to spend, and instead of sending big chunks to people that can really do the proper hypothesis driven studies, they spread it out and this is the crap we get. But, they get published and acknowledge their funding source and they can all go back to sniffing their farts and thinking what a service they have done for the medical community. I will stop here unless someone wants to pick this up in the debate forum....
 
I would be willing to be that somewhere at some point in time, due to "research" like this, beer could end up on a restricted list that is dictated by health care policy as provided by some people.

it's called Codex Alimentarius.
 
The science itself appears to be sound, but the media's interpretation of the study is incomplete (big surprise!)


I disagree. Not only the science doesn't appear to be good, but actually there doesn't seem to be any science whatsoever behind those claims.
"Science" is defined as the correlation of cause-process-effect. Meaning, once you find out something is producing a given effect, you look for the reason, and mechanism causing it. What that article describes is a purely cause-effect correlation, the old "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy.
If Sir Isaac Newton had stopped at that, we'd all know today "gravity" is the force that causes apples to fall to the ground. But he didn't, and that's what made him a scientist. Now, thanks to him, we also know gravity is the reason glass carboys have such a short life expectancy, for example...;)

If that "study" had said, for example, "after conducting a Pan European study for 10 years, and reviewing 50 thousand cases of gastric cancer all around the continent, on people of all races and nationalities (race, diet and lifestyle are known to be major factors for this kind of diseases), we have found a correlation between beer drinking and gastric cancer, and, upon studying the phenomenon, we have found that beer contains this and that substances, that produce this or that effect on the cells, ultimately leading to a high incidence of gastric cancer", that would be sound science.
 
It's bullcrap science, I'm sure of it.

Think about the artificial sweetners claim of causing cancer. They linked cancer to these sweetners in mice. The amount they gave the mouse equated to way more than a human could reasonable ingest. It was ridiculous and I'm sure this study is very similar.
 
Think about the artificial sweetners claim of causing cancer. They linked cancer to these sweetners in mice. The amount they gave the mouse equated to way more than a human could reasonable ingest. It was ridiculous and I'm sure this study is very similar.

Yeah, I had a friend who was a chemist and worked for a major pharmaceutical company. He mentioned that once and said they injected the mice with nearly 1000x the typical dosage amount and did it repeatedly over months and a few got cancer from it.

I may be off with the 1000x amount, but I remember it was an astronomical amount.


Rev.
 
Yeah, I had a friend who was a chemist and worked for a major pharmaceutical company. He mentioned that once and said they injected the mice with nearly 1000x the typical dosage amount and did it repeatedly over months and a few got cancer from it.

I may be off with the 1000x amount, but I remember it was an astronomical amount.


Rev.

They did that with many,if not all of the "carcinogens" previously "unknown". Hence my previous reply...
 
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