Chris, You may be misinterpreting my posts. My interpretation of your posts was that you were negating all correlational research. I'm not sure if you meant this, but it's what I gathered from your posts. When I questioned calling "these studies ridiculous" - I thought you were referring to ALL correlational studies, not just the current study.
In an earlier post you'll see I commented on exactly what you have said about the smoking research and why the tobacco companies were wrong (they knew they were wrong, btw). My citing the tobacco research was to illuminate that non-experimental research CAN have merit, especially when ethical limitations exist, when they are well conducted, and there is other supporting evidence. You SEEMED to be poo-pooing correlational research in general, which is why I raised the smoking research. I wasn't saying the alcohol/breast cancer research was just as thorough and conclusive; in fact, I said the contrary! I also did not say that I tell my students to STOP drinking (really, when did I say this?). I give them a heads up about some of the emerging, albeit correlational, research in this area and contrast this with the frenzy of recommendations about alcohol preventing cardiovascular disease without any consideration of potential other problems (they are not just limited to breast cancer, btw - another area of concern are pre-natal effects). We seem to look at research findings in a vacuum, and I briefly discuss the research in this area as one example of why we need to be more critical. Also, between you and me (and the rest of the list) I don't think the research on alcohol's cardiovascular benefits is completely solid either. But I still wonder, has anyone actually READ this current study? Should we be jumping to conclusions about it just because the BBC did a poor job of reporting it? Dean ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: BBC NEWS | Health | Drink a day increases cancer risk From: "Christopher D. Green" <chri...@yorku.ca> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:14:59 -0500 X-Message-Number: 16 Amadio, Dean wrote: > Are you saying that we should ignore all non-experimental research? Of course not. I saying we should draw from correlational research the conclusions that are justified by correlational research. > I'm concerned you're giving this message to your students! This is the > justification the tobacco industry used to say that there is no evidence that > smoking causes lung cancer in humans. But they were simply wrong. Part of it was correlational, but there was (eventually) lots of good animal and histological and biochemcial research that proved what the correlations suggested might be the case. It might well have turned out otherwise. It took good research, not correlational speculations to establish the causal connection. Your argument seems to be that just because one famous correlational connection proved (upon further experimental research) to be underpinned by a causal connection (tobacco-cancer), that all such correlations must be underpinned by a causal connection (alcohol-cancer). Obviously, that is a very poor inference. > we have to adopt a wait and see and skeptical, but perhaps somewhat prudent > attitude. This is precisely the message I give students. Telling your students on the basis of merely suggestive research of this sort that they should wholly abstain from alcohol is not merely prudent. It is alarmist, and unwarranted by the currently available data. > While the BBC article certainly overstated much (as is typical with popular > media), I think calling these types of studies "ridiculous" is very > misleading, and in some instances, downright dangerous. I repeat: Even if the causal connection were established here, the rise in in cancer risk would amount to 2 in 10,000. Does that strike you as dangerous? That's about the same as the probability of being killed in a car accident (see http://www.fearlessflight.com/airplane-disasters-plane-crash-statistics). Do you totally abstain from riding in cars for fear of being killed in one? Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- END OF DIGEST --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
