Alcohol research - who funds it?

When I mention the vast amount of evidence showing that moderate drinking is good for your health, midwits will occasionally respond with the objection that non-drinkers are inherently less healthy or that the studies showing a protective effect are funded by the booze industry.

The 'sick quitter' hypothesis is a zombie argument that was debunked decades ago. The claim about industry funding is not really an argument. If the science is sound, it doesn't matter who funds the studies.

But, as a matter of fact, very few of the studies are funded by the alcohol industry. An article published this month in Addictive Behaviors gives us chapter and verse on this. Of the 713 primary studies on drinking and cardiovascular disease published between 1969 and 2019, only 8 per cent declared alcohol industry funding. In the last 15 years, there have been hardly any. (NB. The benefits of moderate drinking are mostly related to heart disease.)

 

One of the article's two authors is Jim McCambridge who has spent his whole career obsessing over the alcohol industry and would love to debunk the J-Curve. In the introduction, he describes the question of whether moderate drinking is good for the heart as "a major scientific controversy" (only in temperance circles) and even resurrects the sick quitter cope. You can tell from the text that has was disappointed not to find more industry funding, but that's just too bad. The facts are the facts.

 

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