How alcohol industry organisations mislead the public about alcohol and cancer
That study&#x27;s introduction is a little disingenuous and frankly a little alarmist.  To break it down:<p>Edit: Just to be clear, I&#x27;m not trying to disprove the study.  I simply think their introduction is needlessly hyperbolic.<p>&quot;Alcohol consumption is a well-established risk factor for a range of cancers, accounting for approximately 4% of new cancer cases annually [1, 2].&quot;<p>The first citation is pay-walled, so I can&#x27;t confirm, but the abstract states &quot;The net effect of alcohol consumption on health is detrimental, with an estimated 3.8% of all global deaths and 4.6% of global disability-adjusted life-years attributable to alcohol.&quot;  It says nothing about cancer specifically, but this could just be a vague abstract.  Perhaps the data holds up, but a very large fraction of that 3.8% and 4.6% would have to be due to cancer.  I&#x27;m skeptical.<p>The second citation however is blatantly misrepresented.  It appears to be where the 4% number comes from, but it is UK specific (and almost certainly influenced by UK-specific drinking habits).  The authors by contrast present it in a general context.  Likewise it&#x27;s worth noting that the source puts quitting smoking, keeping a healthy weight, and eating more fruits&#x2F;vegetables as more important in preventing cancer than reducing alcohol consumption.  And even at UK levels it&#x27;s apparently only marginally more important than reducing sun exposure (also a UK-specific result).<p>They go on to effectively support the statement &quot;alcohol increases cancer risk&quot; in detail and I guess I can&#x27;t blame them for wanting to grab the reader&#x27;s attention, but scientific spin doctoring and lack of hard numbers irks me regardless of context.<p>As for alcohol companies telling their customers as little as legally required about the negative effects of alcohol, I&#x27;m glad they put some numbers on the issue but I think we can file that in the &quot;no shit&quot; folder.  The policy makers&#x2F;lesson planners&#x2F;etc they appear to aim the study at are almost certainly well aware of the concept of conflict-of-interest, and if they aren&#x27;t then I doubt they&#x27;re literate enough to be swayed by this study.