Doll parts

I've got an article up at Spectator Health contrasting the 'public health' reaction to two epidemiological findings associated with Richard Doll. The first involved smoking, the second involved drinking.

As before, a noisy minority continued to deny these findings. They insisted that the biological pathways were unproven, though plausible pathways had been identified. They made generic criticisms of epidemiology that could apply to any observational research, though they never made them of studies which showed negative effects from drinking. Above all, they treated the sick quitter hypothesis as an unanswered question, never acknowledging that it had been tested extensively.

Decades after the evidence on moderate alcohol consumption had first been identified, those who refused to accept it were embroiled in a campaign of doubt and denial similar to what Doll had witnessed in the mid-20th century, but this time the naysayers were on the inside of the public health establishment, albeit in its neo-temperance wing. For years, they chipped away at the science, repeating the same old criticisms, cherry-picking studies and demanding an impossible burden of proof from researchers. They received a sympathetic hearing from their public health colleagues who had long struggled with the nuanced message that heavy drinking was bad while moderate drinking was good. Preferring a simple, clear, strong message that alcohol was dangerous, they were similarly inclined to dismiss or downplay the epidemiology.

Do read the whole thing.