Hacker News Reader

I love coffee, I drink atleast 2 cups a day, I love hearing that coffee is good for me, but it still makes me wonder if any of this information about coffee is misinformation. After all, doctors and scientists are human.. for instance, http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/smoking/smoking...

View on HN

Well established ways of conduction medical studies that dont depend on doctor quirks. They can establish a mathematically significant correlation. Correlation doesnt establish causality.

Doctors tend to be actually heavy smokers, from my experience. I have talked about this with a couple of them and they say that it helps them facing the stress of their everyday duties - even though they are aware of the health risks.

In the U.S. at least, doctors smoke at a much lower rate than the general population. It might be that they stand-out more when smoking if you know that they are physicians.

a lot of them are borderline or full blown alcoholics too. this stems from the job they do - depressing, stressful, often under-appreciated. they know the effects of addictions too well, but at the end, they are still only human beings like rest of us...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com