Alcohol: ‘more harmful than heroin’, or all in the mind?

If you’ve been following reports in the media recently, you may be a little confused about alcohol and its’ effects. A year ago, the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs published a report on drug harms in the Lancet. They calculated harm scores, to an individual and to society as a whole, and found that alcohol was more damaging than heroin or crack cocaine. And only this week the Royal College of Physicians released a report about alcohol. It provides evidence that our livers need three days alcohol free per week, if we have more than one or two drinks per day. If you drink heavily one evening, you should have a couple of days off before you drink again. From this evidence, it seems that alcohol is bad news.

Dynamite Money

Housing Genius: the Nobel Museum, Stockholm

#1: The Growling Bear

Since this week happens to be the time of year when small bands of elite academics (and sometimes spurious accessories, like Barack Obama) are ushered into the scholarly Hall of Fame, this seems the perfect time to start a new column here on Sifting The Evidence: I'll aim to profile the life and graft of one Nobel Prize winner every month. 


This will span three of the five categories, so anyone from physics, chemistry or physiology/medicine is eligible, but I won’t feature winners of the literature or peace prizes (for, in the eyes of this blog, these are domains of beatniks). And economics also squeaks in, despite its unofficial status. The prizes have been awarded for a diverse array of amazing theories, discoveries and innovations, from radioactivity to IVF, and are given to personalities of every shade, from the outspoken to (perhaps predictably) the somewhat autistic. But first, we’ll start with the Growling Bear himself: Alfred Nobel. 

One of the concerns frequently expressed about climate change policies, is that if we reduce and restrict carbon emissions in the UK, then energy intensive manufacturing will simply shut down and move to other countries.

Some fascinating research, via Ryan Avent, suggests that this may not be the case.

Ralf Martin, Laure de Preux, and Ulrich Wagner published a really interesting paper investigating the effects of the UK’s climate change levy (CCL) and climate change agreements (CCA) on manufacturing firms production of goods, energy use and carbon emissions.

They used data on individual firms from the Office of National Statistics, and found:

Global warming, carbon emissions and hyperactive government policy: when less is more.

How much progress has the UK made in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions?

A little?  Just about kept emissions from increasing?

Why we should be wary of the tobacco companies

There have been reports today that five tobacco companies are trying to sue the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over new laws that will come in to place in September, forcing them to display graphic health warnings on their products. These are similar to warnings used here in UK, and in many other countries around the world.

Putting aside for a moment their farcical suggestion that this removes their constitutional right to free speech, it has brought a more alarming fact to my attention; namely that this is the first legal change to cigarette packaging in 25 years. How has the USA government allowed them to get away with so much for so long? Of course a large part of the answer is the financial control that these companies have; their lobbying has funded campaigns to keep shop displays of smoking products, and allegedly funded grass-roots organisations denouncing governmental smoking laws as ‘nannying’.

Lies, damn lies and public sector deficits

Across the western world,  governments are struggling with high public debt.  After much melodrama the US congress increased the amount of money the US government can borrow.  In the UK net public sector debt has increased from 37.5% of GDP in 2007 to 61% of GDP in 2011.  The coalition has set itself the target of eliminating the public sector deficit over the next four years.  They claim that there is no alternative to cutting government spending, and unless government spending is reduced, the UK may be unable to afford to pay its debts and may risk default on its debts.

These claims are false. It remarkably simple to check whether a country,  a company or individual is likely to default.  When borrowers’ likelihood of default increases the interest rate they are forced to pay on their debt goes up.  For example, Greece is currently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and currently it must pay 14% on its government debt.  So what has happened to the interest rate on British government debt? 

What Didn't Kill Mozart

Not one for bronzing up

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have been stricken with many ailments, but if you were to believe recent reports, it was vitamin D deficiency that principally led to him to an early grave.

It’s not to be denied that Mozart could have been as ivory in complexion as the keys that he struck to earn his keep: the man lived at a northerly latitude—where the winter sun isn’t strong enough to induce the synthesis of vitamin D in the skin—and if his personality were to be put in musical terms, he was allegedly something of a nocturne.  Unlike other vitamins, there’s no vitamin D in most food sources, and the majority is obtained from exposure to sunlight. At the time of Mozart’s death (1791), there was little knowledge of vitamin D, let alone ways of measuring his status, so for all we know he could well have had insufficient or deficient levels of the vitamin. But there are two big ambiguities that should temper unsubstantiated chatter about Mozart having succumbed to his dappled lifestyle.