Comments on: Wine and cancer. Shock! Horreur! http://www.thewineblog.net/2008-05-wine-and-cancer-shock-horreur/ An international group blog about wine, with Martin Field, Mike Tommasi and friends Tue, 11 Jun 2013 07:49:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Mike Tommasi http://www.thewineblog.net/2008-05-wine-and-cancer-shock-horreur/comment-page-1/#comment-57 Mike Tommasi Tue, 13 May 2008 17:32:25 +0000 http://cmarc.net/WordPress/2008_05_11_wine-and-cancer-shock-horreur/#comment-57 every day the BBC punctuates their news bursts with ads and little fluff science blurbs about something terrifying but almost meaningless. One recent one was about paracetamol reducing the risk of something or other. I can just see the thousands of people going out to buy paracetamol an then developing an ulcer or something like that. In the article you mentioned, the question is, the risk is raised 75% from WHAT level? This could mean that instead of one chance in 1 million you now have almost two... in which case big deal... or is it much higher? Relative measures like that are meaningless if you dont know the baseline. But it makes good filler for today's media. every day the BBC punctuates their news bursts with ads and little fluff science blurbs about something terrifying but almost meaningless. One recent one was about paracetamol reducing the risk of something or other. I can just see the thousands of people going out to buy paracetamol an then developing an ulcer or something like that.

In the article you mentioned, the question is, the risk is raised 75% from WHAT level? This could mean that instead of one chance in 1 million you now have almost two… in which case big deal… or is it much higher? Relative measures like that are meaningless if you dont know the baseline. But it makes good filler for today’s media.

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