One other thing to note here -- In the past chapter or two we followed a different pattern than a lot of web searching. Here we decided who would be the most trustworthy source of medical consensus (the NIH) and went and looked up what they said.\n\nThis is an important technique to have in your research mix. Too often we execute web search after web search without first asking who would constitute an expert. Unsurprisingly, when we do things in this order we end up valuing the expertise of people who agree with us and devaluing that of those who don\u2019t. If you find yourself going down a rabbit hole of conflicting information in your searches, back up a second and ask yourself: \u00a0whose expertise you would respect? Maybe it\u2019s not the NIH. Maybe it\u2019s the Mayo Clinic, or Medline, or the World Health Organization. But deciding who has expertise before you search will mediate some of your worst tendencies toward confirmation bias.\n\nSo, given the evidence we've seen in previous chapters about alcohol and cancer -- am I going to give up my after-work porter? I don\u2019t know. I really like porter, the evidence is still emerging, and maybe the risk increase is worth it. But I\u2019m also convinced the Washington Post article isn\u2019t the newest version of \u201ceating grapefruit will make you thinner.\u201d It\u2019s not even \u201cNutrasweet may make you fat\u201d, which is an interesting finding, but a point around which there is no consensus. Instead \u201csmall amounts of daily alcohol increase cancer risk\u201d represents a real emerging consensus in the research, and from our review we find it\u2019s not even a particularly new trend -- the consensus emerged some time ago (the NIH FAQ dates back to 2010). it\u2019s just been poorly communicated to the public.<\/p>","rendered":"
One other thing to note here — In the past chapter or two we followed a different pattern than a lot of web searching. Here we decided who would be the most trustworthy source of medical consensus (the NIH) and went and looked up what they said.<\/p>\n
This is an important technique to have in your research mix. Too often we execute web search after web search without first asking who would constitute an expert. Unsurprisingly, when we do things in this order we end up valuing the expertise of people who agree with us and devaluing that of those who don\u2019t. If you find yourself going down a rabbit hole of conflicting information in your searches, back up a second and ask yourself: \u00a0whose expertise you would respect? Maybe it\u2019s not the NIH. Maybe it\u2019s the Mayo Clinic, or Medline, or the World Health Organization. But deciding who has expertise before you search will mediate some of your worst tendencies toward confirmation bias.<\/p>\n
So, given the evidence we’ve seen in previous chapters about alcohol and cancer — am I going to give up my after-work porter? I don\u2019t know. I really like porter, the evidence is still emerging, and maybe the risk increase is worth it. But I\u2019m also convinced the Washington Post article isn\u2019t the newest version of \u201ceating grapefruit will make you thinner.\u201d It\u2019s not even \u201cNutrasweet may make you fat\u201d, which is an interesting finding, but a point around which there is no consensus. Instead \u201csmall amounts of daily alcohol increase cancer risk\u201d represents a real emerging consensus in the research, and from our review we find it\u2019s not even a particularly new trend — the consensus emerged some time ago (the NIH FAQ dates back to 2010). it\u2019s just been poorly communicated to the public.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t