Firstly, the absolute risk increase was pretty small across the boardhttps://twitter.com/justsaysrisks/status/1168995180797747201?s=20 …
-
Show this thread
-
In other words, if someone went from drinking 1 can of Diet Coke a YEAR to 2 cans A DAY they would increase their risk of, say, cancer, by less than 1%
1 reply 6 retweets 23 likesShow this thread -
Secondly, THE RISK INCREASE WAS NON-LINEAR In practical terms, this means that the people who were at the lowest risk were people who drank roughly one can of Coke/Diet Coke every 2 dayspic.twitter.com/Tip3pKMNTK
3 replies 2 retweets 19 likesShow this thread -
If we're going to be consistent in using this research, we should encourage modest soft drink consumption, which I find absolutely hilarious
2 replies 5 retweets 50 likesShow this thread -
This brings us to arguably the most important point - this research was OBSERVATIONALpic.twitter.com/02OPAfKlqG
1 reply 1 retweet 16 likesShow this thread -
Now, observational research can be incredibly useful and meaningful for public health, but there are also some real difficulties in drawing causal conclusions from studies like this
1 reply 2 retweets 21 likesShow this thread -
In other words, we don't know if the increased risk of Bad Things was due to soft drink consumption or something that the study didn't measure
1 reply 1 retweet 27 likesShow this thread -
For example, we know that ethnicity and income can change someone's risk of death, but the study didn't control for these things at all Could be that people who drink more soft drinks are just less well off than those who don't!
1 reply 1 retweet 18 likesShow this thread -
Another hilarious thing about the study was that for some diseases, soft drinks were REALLY protective at low doses For example, drinking an extra Diet Coke a week REDUCED your risk of breast cancer by 21%
2 replies 4 retweets 38 likesShow this thread -
Realistically, it's more likely that there are some significant confounders still remaining so we just don't know whether soft drinks = death/cancer from this study
1 reply 0 retweets 14 likesShow this thread
Also, for the epi nerds, the study authors attribute the reduction in risk at low doses to reverse confounding, but I find this argument unconvincing
-
-
Firstly, they did a specific sensitivity analysis to try and control for reverse causality which didn't change the results, so their own results don't agree with this interpretation
1 reply 0 retweets 10 likesShow this thread -
Secondly, this is absolutely a non-differential effect, so you'd expect it to apply equally across all groups of the study rather than only reducing the observed risk in one particular group of people
2 replies 0 retweets 15 likesShow this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.