Having avoided looking at most UK news for the last two weeks, a quick peek at the BBC website this morning reveals that sloppy journalism is alive and well whilst shroud waving medics are still banging on about the dangers of exceeding made up drinking limits.

The BBC article itself has the following guff involving experts, medics, charities and the department of health :

Drinking over the limit ‘raises cancer risk’

Drinking more than a pint of beer a day can substantially increase the risk of some cancers, research shows.

A large Europe-wide study in the British Medical Journal found that one-in-10 of all cancers in men and one-in-33 of all cancers in women are caused by past or current alcohol intake.

For alcohol-related cancers, one-in-three in men and one-in-20 in women are caused by any excessive drinking.

The Department of Health said it was taking action to target drinking.

Cancer charities say people should limit their drinking to lower the risk.

The highlighted sentence there being one of the more amusing pieces of straw clutching in the article – if a cancer is alcohol related then why are only one in three caused by excessive drinking?

There are plenty more like that in the article – the following was one that also raised a smile :

Of the cancers known to be linked to alcohol, the researchers suggest that 40 to 98% occur in people who drink more than the recommended maximum.

Nothing like a 58% spread in research results to instil confidence in a report is there?

The most important point that the BBC does not mention is in the research report itself and suggests to me that everyone can safely ignore the whole article :

Results – If we assume causality, among men and women, 10% (95% confidence interval 7 to 13%) and 3% (1 to 5%) of the incidence of total cancer was attributable to former and current alcohol consumption in the selected European countries.

Yes that’s right – assume causality and then perform statistical voodoo to arrive at the results required to justify the large amount of EU money you just hosed up the wall.

I am sure that you could choose any number of parameters from a study involving a large group of people and find a link to cancer incidence. They may as well have written that breathing oxygen is dangerous for you as it can be linked to 100% of cancers but that wouldn’t support the EU bansturbatory agenda would it?