This type of study is common for environmental risks - you take people who have a relatively rare issue, and see what exposures might have caused it
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In this case, the researchers used two measures of how much coffee people drank: 1. asking them questions 2. metabolites of coffee in their blood
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They found two different things. For the self-reported coffee intake, there was no association between any coffee drinking and diabetes In other words, the opposite of the headlinespic.twitter.com/UxeswpjKDW
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For the metabolite analysis, there was a reduced risk of diabetes for those who had a lot of filtered coffee metabolites in their blood This equated to an odds ratio of 0.42, which is where we get the "60% reduced!" figure from
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But...metabolites aren't necessarily intake, especially since these metabolites were associated with coffee through a complex set of assumptions and statistical analyses
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So what did the study conclude? Well, have a read. Notice how it doesn't mention the wonders of filtered coffee AT ALL?pic.twitter.com/X4FS9POY8B
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So where did the headlines come from? Well, it appears that the senior author of the paper gave what I can only describe as an astonishing interview in the press release
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Here's some quotes. Remember THIS PAPER DIDN'T LOOK AT WHETHER FILTERED COFFEE CAUSED REDUCED DIABETES RATESpic.twitter.com/HG7AzbOv9S
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The aim of the study appears to be mostly to use a new technique to investigate consumption, which is where the metabolites come from Everything to do with coffee reducing diabetes is basically complete nonsense
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The high filtered coffee drinkers - the people least likely to get diabetes - were better educated, younger, thinner, and smoked less than people who didn't drink filtered coffee It's a textbook case of "probably residual confounding"
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There are so many things that might've caused the association between filtered coffee and diabetes that simply weren't measured in this study! It's almost certain that it wasn't the coffee
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It is SO FRUSTRATING when academics are appropriately cautious in studies but then give absurd interviews with total overreach of their resultspic.twitter.com/lCH7zPQZ87
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Anyway, TL;DR: - vague association between filtered coffee and diabetes - probably not causal - drink your coffee however you want



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