Well, maybe not so off-topic on this board…
This was on CNN today…
http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/12/05/shrinking.brain.ap/index.html
Our poor brains.
Adam 
I drank 2 beers last night after i heard that. I thought by now the damage’s already done. 
Liking Irish music or Irish things does not automatically qualify one to a life of drunkeness and brain shrinkage.
(Playing recorder does.)
People always call me brainy and look at me funny. I drink in hopes of fitting in some day.
You’re right that your post might be on, or off topic 
, but the forthcoming mini-rant is a definite step off the old whistle topic…
Is anyone else here sick to death of “pop” science and the media’s love of it? Whatever happened to the need to actually replicate a study several times before announcing it as the absolute truth. If there is anything the constantly contradictory barrage of “news” reports about scientific breakthroughs has show recently, it’s that the we shouldn’t believe these scientific reports until they have withstood the test of time. From diets to what’s good for your heart to what’s really a cancer causing agent - each week we get a brand new study, not yet replicated, and usually incompletely reported, telling us how to live.
I think I’m ranting so much because I’d read this article earlier in the day an it really irked me. For example:
"Ding said researchers cannot make a definitive cause-and-effect link between drinking and brain atrophy because the MRIs were done only once during the study and because they found only a small reduction in tissue. "
Then what the bloody h*&$ is the point of this article!
Eric
Eric, you have broken herbivore12’s and Wombat’s Holy Rule of never veering off topic, watch your head. 
Go, Jayhawk, go!! Lovin’ it… Don’t forget to include the ever-grant-seeking Center for Science in the Public Interest in the tirade!
That’s right. It’s not the light drinking that leads to brain shrinkage, it’s the brain shrinkage that leads to light drinking. Had the brain swollen, there might be heavy drinking, or possibly a desire to join a think tank, such as the Jesus Seminar or the ACLU.
What a crock!
First…drinking in moderation is good for you…then it shrinks your brain.
Live in moderation with an occasional outburst of passionate living…
Or live passionatetly with an occasional outburst of moderation. Just don’t live in fear of all this nonsense. My 2 cents worth.
In the end you are going to be dead. Period.
Ecclesiastes IX,7 “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.”
Hey! My brain is currantly growing at an alarming rate, thanks to new fingering patterns that I’m now learning on the . . . yes that’s right, recorder.
Drunkeness doesn’t cause brain shrinkage. Not thinking while drinking does.
I forgot what I was going to write… oh well, I’ll just have another beer! 
I notice when I wag my head, something inside
it sounds like castenets. Must be my
brain. Cool!
Why are you wagging your head?
I saw that quote too! How could they tell if it shrank if they only did one MRI??? I mean, doesn’t one have to have something to compare that MRI to?
I agree, the media really goes for the shock value of any story, however baseless it might be. Just use common sense and enjoy your life for crying out loud!
Robin
I find that sensational exaggeration of science highly unethical, because it really does give people anxieties and affect their behavior. My mother, for instance, is convinced that alcoholism is genetic—she heard it on TV. Scientists find signs of a genetic predisposition to alcohol addiction, which can contribute to a largely environmental problem; but as far as channel 5 is concerned, alcholism is now genetic.
Now, my uncle was an alcoholic, in fact enough of an alcoholic that I find myself callously saying “was” even though he’s still alive. The poor man had such a problem that he can’t remember the last 30 years of his life, and now resides in a nursing home. My mother is now terrified that the same will happen to her children, because the TV guys said so. I tell her this is not what scientists really found, but TV has a way of affecting our beliefs at a fundamental level, usually more than we realize.
But it’s a curious fuzzy ethical dilemma, because as you can see from the CNN article, reporters do not blatantly simplify the findings; they actually tell you exactly what the scientists found, XYZ may be linked to PDQ, this may or may not be causal, disclaimers and all; and yet there’s something about the whole context, the headline, the way the news is delivered, that makes people walk away with a more sensational version of the story.
Caj
[quote=“spittin_in_the_wind”
I saw that quote too! How could they tell if it shrank if they only did one MRI??? I mean, doesn’t one have to have something to compare that MRI to?
Robin[/quote]
The sentence “The findings showed that both voids grew larger the more people drank” gives the impression, by it’s wording, that they did find a cause and effect relationship-which they turn around and deny. If they had said that “the size of the voids was larger in those people who drank more” or something of that sort it would have been more accurate assuming that the effect was statistically reliable. Presumably what they did was to do a correlation between the alcohol intake and void size. The comparison was betwen different people who drank different amounts. Thier last sentence to the effect that the differences were small makes me wonder about the statistical reliability of their correlation. It would also be interesting to know that reductions of the size they found were actually due to atrophy and, if so, do reductions of this size relate to brain function. It might be interesting to get hold of a copy of Stroke and have a look.
Steve
I looked up Stroke online. The issue with the article won’t be available till the 7th. Here’s a somewhat better online report.
http://www.diabetes-and-diet.com/html/latest-news.php3/id=516366&term=diabetes
Steve
Just counter booze’s effect of a shrinking brain by playing well in front of an appreciative crowd. That’ll make your whole head swell. Of course, playing badly will make your whole body get smaller.
JP
[quote="spittin_in_the_windI saw that quote too! How could they tell if it shrank if they only did one MRI??? I mean, doesn’t one have to have something to compare that MRI to?
I agree, the media really goes for the shock value of any story, however baseless it might be. Just use common sense and enjoy your life for crying out loud!
Robin[/quote]
I’ll drink to that! 
I think what happened with the single MRI check is that it showed a division into two groups – the drinkers had a statistically significant difference in brain shrinkage rate (a normal part of the aging process) as compared to nondrinkers.
Something important to keep in mind is that there isn’t a direct one to one relationship between ability to function and quantitative loss of tissue.
– Dan M.
Oh yeah, there was a study in the Lancet a couple of years ago, showing a correlation between alcohol consumption and lesser rates of dementia (i.e., alzheimers and similar conditions). It didn’t seem to matter whether it was beer, wine, or vodka – it was the alcohol that was correlated.
Sorry, my copy of the report is buried in a file folder somewhere so I can’t give the citation.
– Dan M.