Beer Drinking Mentioned

[Car-Guy]

Always interested in good reasons to drink beer. Regardless of any of these studies, I'm not going to change my beer drinking habits.

Although, I might think twice about any brand of beer if they told me they were brewing with water from Flint Michigan.

 

[ERD50]

Do you have to be Finnish to gain this benefit?

Yes, you have to finnish the beer to gain the benefits.

Quote from the abstract:

CONCLUSIONS:
Beer consumption may protect against Aβ aggregation in brain. Further studies are necessary to fully understand the effects of alcohol on Aβ pathology seen in brain tissue.

It's a bit of a leap of faith between Aβ aggregation in brain and symptoms of Alzheimer's. I wouldn't start celebrating yet!

It's a leap of faith I'm willing to take!

And more seriously, thank you for the background on the publications, something those of us outside the field would not know. I'll watch the Oliver video next.

Beer is good in the summer when it's hot outside.
...

No study needed, verified personally -

Beer is good year round. You just need to adjust your styles to the season - that's why there are so many styles. A Russian Imperial Stout, or Barley-wine can be just the thing in front of the fire on a cold winter's night.

-ERD50

 

[RobbieB]

Pass. A Tom & Jerry or a hot buttered rum perhaps. Some mulled wine por favor. With the roasted chestnuts please.

 

[jabbahop]

As a former medical researcher, I do have some knowledge of Pubmed.

Pubmed is simply a library. It indexes articles published in a large number of peer reviewed journals. Once the journal reaches the criteria for inclusion in Pubmed, there is no screening of individual articles by Pubmed.

This article has been published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, which is the official publication of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. While I never had occasion to use this journal during my career, my expectation is that the peer review would be rigorous.

Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research - Author Guidelines - Wiley Online Library

The current impact factor of this journal is 3.21, which is good.

https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1530-0277_Alcoholism_Clinical_and_Experimental_Research

I am not going to purchase the full article and critique it for you, but let's assume that the study was well executed. From the abstract, we can see that the study examined several chemical variables at the time of autopsy, and correlated them with history provided by relatives. Now, it's a good thing that the study involves humans rather than experimental animals, but, as we all know, history can be subject to bias and inaccuracy. Also, there could be many other variables which influence the results. Correlation is not the same as causation.

The study investigated the association between consumption of different alcoholic beverages and β-amyloid (Aβ) aggregation in the brain, 1 of the neuropathological lesions of Alzheimer's disease. The results suggest that there was, indeed, an association between these variables. BUT this tells us nothing about any association, causal or otherwise, between beer drinking and Alzheimer's. That is a question that this study was simply not designed to answer. Rather, the results of this study have generated some interesting questions, which can only be answered by further research.

As a scientist, my response is that the findings are interesting, but the level of evidence in this study does not allow us to conclude that drinking beer is protective against Alzheimer's.

John Oliver's monologue, by the way, is spot on!

Yesterday I was listening to the Planet Money podcast to a fascinating episode called The Experiment Experiment.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/15/463237871/episode-677-the-experiment-experiment

A group of psychology researchers got together to rerun 100 published experiments. They found that they couldn't replicate 60% of them! They concluded that two factors contributed to this lack of repeatability.

1) only positive studies tend to get published so there is a positive outcome bias.

2) researchers can bias the results by adding participants to get significant numbers when they begin to find "interesting" results.

I wasn't a scientist but am fascinated by the practice.


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[photoguy]

Here are the criteria for inclusion in PubMed. They are quite exacting. Only 12-15% of journals which apply and are reviewed are recommended for inclusion in PubMed.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/j_sel_faq.html

Interesting. I didn't realize pubmed was tightly curated. I assumed they just indexed anything that was reasonable quality. Of course, maybe that is just 10-15% of journals...

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Anytime one reads about a study in the press one should take another look at John Oliver's piece on scientific studies and how they results are abused. (Warning: he uses a lot of profanity. Why a talented guy like him needs to do that is beyond me.) I remember reading about one study that claimed a certain diet would reduce heart disease. The study also showed that overall death from 'all causes' went up on this diet. However that result was tactfully avoided.


John Oliver exposes how the media turns scientific studies into "morning show gossip" - Vox

That said, there are some great micro-brews out there, so well and prosper.

The good news is we are now living in a golden age of beer, so drink well and prosper. I make a point of trying to buy the local micro brews, but my big problem is that they don't sell them in 12oz bottles. The days of downing a growler in 24 hours or less are over for me.

I mentioned the Oliver piece earlier in the thread. I watched it again yesterday...and the one on "fashion". The guy sheds light on some pretty big issues while the main stream media is "investigating" a postal carrier throwing a box over a fence or some other goofy issue.

 

[Meadbh]

A group of psychology researchers got together to rerun 100 published experiments. They found that they couldn't replicate 60% of them! They concluded that two factors contributed to this lack of repeatability.

1) only positive studies tend to get published so there is a positive outcome bias.

2) researchers can bias the results by adding participants to get significant numbers when they begin to find "interesting" results.

Studies that have been replicated carry a lot more weight when it comes to making clinical decisions. That's why I never get excited about the latest news stories, but read the original papers. There are several methods of grading "Levels of Evidence". The type of study that is most likely to be valid, because it eliminates many biases, is a randomized controlled trial (RCT). However, a well designed RCT may not be replicable in a different setting. For example, a RCT that show that Drug A is more effective than Drug B in controlling hypertension in men aged 50-65 years may not be replicable in women aged 50-65 years. When several RCTs have been carried out on the same question, their results can be combined in a meta analysis. This is considered the "gold standard". See "Oxford levels of evidence" in the link below. Of course, there are some questions that do not lend themselves to RCTs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levels_of_evidence

You are quite correct that there is a publication bias towards studies with positive results. That is why, in recent years, clinical trials registries have been established. Many granting agencies now require that any study they fund be registered before it begins, so that negative information is not hidden.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trials_registry

If researchers bias results by adding participants to get "interesting" results, that is biased (bad) research. If a researcher makes up results of experiments that did not take place, that is research fraud. Peer review usually weeds out such studies from reaching publication, but sometimes, junk science slips through. One example that has had enormous negative public health consequences was the fraudulent study that concluded that autism was causally associated with vaccination.

The Vaccine-Autism Connection: A Public Health Crisis Caused by Unethical Medical Practices and Fraudulent Science