Garrett M. Petersen

Abstaining From Alcohol has Ambiguous Effect on Life Expectancy: Study

Alcohol! I only drink to make YOU more interesting!Can you imagine a news article with that title? Certainly not. How about  this one: Abstaining from alcohol significantly shortens life. There, that’s more sensational, isn’t it? (To be fair, that’s the title on the page, not the title of the article. I’m not sure why they aren’t the same.)

I’ve seen news articles circulating about a recent study from the University of Texas at Austin that followed 1,824 adults between the ages of 55 and 65, and compared how likely they were to die over a 20-year period depending on whether they abstained from drinking alcohol, drank moderately, or drank heavily. The results indicated that moderate drinkers had the  greatest longevity, followed by heavy drinkers, with abstainers being the most likely to die.

This is where the science reporters stopped paying attention, and started writing sensationalist “alcohol is good for you!” news articles.

I’m skeptical of this interpretation. The technique being used by the researchers is one that is very common in health and social science studies, whereby the researcher measures many real-world variables, and uses linear regression to tease out the effects of each variable on the variable under study. Continue reading Abstaining From Alcohol has Ambiguous Effect on Life Expectancy: Study

Introducing the Economics Detective

This blog is about economics. Economics is about people. People are about six feet tall.

What is economics? It’s the science of human action. People have goals, and they employ means to achieve those goals according to their beliefs.  They act.

I will use this blog to explore economics, to discuss current and historical events relevant to economics, and to converse with you, the public, so we can all learn.