--- Rob Bartlett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > And the point is
> > this: What those "half a dozen other studies," as
> you put it, fail to take
> > into account is the fact that people already ill
> tend to be nondrinkers.
> > Their illness isn't caused by their failure to
> quaff a couple a day.  It's
> > the other way around, they don't drink because
> they're ill.  This is a
> > real statistical quirk which causes the U to turn
> into something more like
> > a J
>
> They could have factored ill persons out of the
> analysis (just as they
> factored poor diet and cigarette smoking out the
> groups drinking a lot of
> alcohol each week).  But they didn't; they just
> speculated that this ill
> group of non-drinkers could account for higher
> cardiovascular disease.
>
> Rob

Exactly. From the information in the article cited by
Jim, there is no reason to think the  Bristol
researchers controlled for this supposed variable any
more than did the studies they criticize.

-gts