In a landmark systematic review of existing medical literature, researchers publishing in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs have found that previous research finding that moderate alcohol consumption had health benefits was badly flawed.
Conventional wisdom for the last several decades, based on earlier research, has held that drinking moderately — on the order of four or five alcoholic drinks a week for adults — has some health benefits and may even be associated with longer lifespans. But that view has increasingly come into doubt, and scientists who examined 107 published studies on alcohol use and health now report that many of those included a key methodological error, one that seriously undermined their conclusions.
