Thoughts about drink, risk, evidence, and culture.
On this page I will discuss a range of things relating to the subtitle above. I call it distillations because I will try to keep it short – – although honestly that is something I find very difficult and let’s be clear, sometimes things need more discussion than the sound bites and simplistic interpretations we often see coming from anti-alcohol advocates who have an agenda and not much time for nuance.
I guess I could’ve called it something related to brewing since the first step towards distilling is mashing grain and fermenting it. But “fermentations” sounded a little weird. Like I was going to explode.
I will post some of the comments I have put on LinkedIn and some that I included in another blog called Drink History Canada. So if you’ve seen this somewhere else it’s probably from one of those sites.
Cheers
- How culture scrubbing denies context and reinforces dumb stereotypesIf you remove something as complex as consuming alcoholic beverages from its cultural context, the knock-on effects are remarkable. Consider the fact, recognized broadly even by some of the most ardent advocates of the population health epidemiological approach to distorting health effects of drink, that people of higher incomes tend to have better health outcomes… Read more: How culture scrubbing denies context and reinforces dumb stereotypes
- Culture scrubbing. What are population level alcohol studies doing to real life?Data scientists often engage in a process called data scrubbing, or ” cleaning” the data. It’s not nefarious, it is just the way to ensure that the data they are using is the most reliable and analyzable data available. Although the decisions on data scrubbing are based upon researchers’ ideas of what kind of data… Read more: Culture scrubbing. What are population level alcohol studies doing to real life?
- Anti-alcohol advocacy narrative.Aka: The horror. The horror *Originally posted on Linked in May 2026* I’ve been thinking a lot about the dominant narratives coming out of alcohol research that uses population-level data and the advocates who amplify it. A subtle but dominant undercurrent reiterates a link between pleasure and risk. This has deep cultural manifestations: -Hansel and… Read more: Anti-alcohol advocacy narrative.
- Accepted narratives drive analytical choices*Originally posted to LinkedIn May 2026* In a recent JAMA Network article reassessing evidence of alcohol harm over time, the authors concluded that there was no significant benefit to moderate drinking; they effectively eliminated the J-curve. One reason the J-curve disappears is that the researchers treated self-reported abstainers as unreliable and removed them from the… Read more: Accepted narratives drive analytical choices
- Never let the data get in the way of a good story.*Originally posted to LinkedIn April 2026* As a historian, it’s my job to think about what story the evidence tells us: who is doing what, and why. I approach current alcohol research in much the same way. Consider, for example, the CCSA’s low risk alcohol guidance. We see a narrative designed to lead readers in… Read more: Never let the data get in the way of a good story.