Study raises new doubts regarding the hypothesised health benefits of ‘moderate’ alcohol use
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Commentary on : Goulden R. Moderate alcohol consumption is not associated with reduced all-cause mortality. Am J Med 2016;129:180–6.e4.[OpenUrl][1][CrossRef][2][PubMed][3] Many observational studies find associations between ‘moderate’ alcohol use and reduced mortality risk compared with abstention. Low doses of alcohol have also been associated with improvements in some biomarkers of cardiovascular health in short-term randomised studies. However, the absence of any randomised clinical trial of any morbidity or mortality outcome, and contradictory Mendelian randomisation studies,1 cast doubt on the veracity of associations found in observational studies. Goulden lists alternative explanations for the classic J-shaped curve for alcohol use and mortality risk, including selection bias, misclassification of drinkers as abstainers and residual confounding. We comment here as authors of a meta-analysis2 raising identical concerns and reporting similar findings. Goulden examined the relationship between level of average daily alcohol consumption and risk of death … [1]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DAm%2BJ%2BMed%26rft.volume%253D129%26rft.spage%253D180%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1016%252Fj.amjmed.2015.10.013%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Apmid%252F26524703%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [2]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.10.013&link_type=DOI [3]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=26524703&link_type=MED&atom=%2Febmed%2F21%2F4%2F156.atom
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Commentary About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
| gpt | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Commentary About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Not applicable | low |
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.048 | 0.172 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.012 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.052 | 0.042 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.011 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".