Is the BBC website trying to make us all eat more bacon/drink more booze ?

Have a read here and let us know how you interpretate that ? Doesn’t it say: it is not as bad as it sounds (or better than it sounds even), so eat and drink as much as you like ?!?

Only if you dont understand how statistics work.

but isn’t that what the whole article is about ? most people don’t !

That article is also misleading, in a different way.

Applying stats to a group of people in those cases has no bearing on how you individually are affected (just like the classic 99 coin flips in a row all yield heads, but it’s still 50/50 the the next flip will also be heads).

The point that 2x not much is still not much, but any increase on a 10% chance of cancer for example should be avoided if at all possible, since 10% isn’t a particularly small chance.

Personally I avoid all statistics unless they’re 100% 😀

Glenh but a 20% increase on a 10% chance only means a 2% increase in instances, so an overall risk of 12%, so the headline chould read “eat bacon and you are 2% more likely to get colonic cancer” but that isn’t as dramatic as “bacon causes 20% increase in the risk of getting cancer”