There are many ways in which this simplest of all experiments could be refined or
elaborated, but we need not pause to discuss such complications here what I have
outlined above constitutes a simple experiment which in many circumstances would be all
that is required to determine the effect of wine consumption on longevity.
Such an experiment has never been conducted
And so you can see from my outline of what an experiment would be like that such an
experiment could never have been conducted. We know this without doing a review of the
literature, without having read a single paper on wine consumption and health.
Manipulating long-term alcohol consumption in an experiment is impracticable. We know it
because, in the first place, it would be impossible to get experimental subjects to
comply with the particular wine-drinking regimen to which the experimenter had assigned
them. For example, many of the subjects who found themselves in the zero-glass
condition would refuse to pass the next 30 years without drinking a drop of wine. There
is no conceivable inducement within the power of the experimenter to offer that would
tempt these experimental subjects to become teetotallers for what could be the rest of
their lives. The same at the other end of the scale - most people requested to drink
large volumes of wine each day would refuse, and the experimenter would find that he had
no resources available to him by means of which he could win compliance.
And even if the experimenter were able to offer such vast sums of money to his subjects
that every last one of them agreed to comply with the required drinking regimen - and no
experimenter has such resources - then two things would happen: (1) the subjects would
cheat, as by many in the zero-glass group sneaking drinks whenever they could, and many
in the many-glass groups drinking less than was required of them; and (2) subjects who
found their drinking regimens uncomfortable would quit the experiment. Subjects
quitting the experiment constitutes a fatal blow to experimental validity because it
transforms groups that started out randomly constituted (and thus equivalent in every
conceivable respect) into groups that are naturally constituted (and which must be
assumed to be probably different in many conceivable respects) - a conclusion that I
will not pause to explain in detail.
Manipulating long-term alcohol consumption in an experiment is unethical. And we know
that no such experiment has ever been conducted because it would be unethical to conduct
it, and would inevitably lead to the experimenter being sued. That is, it is unethical
in scientific research to transform people's lives in possibly harmful ways. Most
specifically, it is unethical to transform people's lives by inducing them to drink
substantial amounts of alcohol every day for several decades. The potential harm is
readily evident.
For example, drinking 10 glasses of wine per day, or even several glasses, will
predispose a person to accidents. A single experimental subject who consumed several
glasses of wine and then was incapacitated in an automobile accident would be all that
it would take to bring such research to a halt forever. The accident victim might
readily argue that the experiment requiring him to drink wine was responsible for his
accident, and that the experimenter - and the university at which he worked, and the
granting agency that funded his research - were liable for millions of dollars. In
anticipation of no more than the possibility of such a law suit, no granting agency
would fund such research, and no university or research institution would allow it to be
conducted under its roof.
Consuming substantial amounts of alcohol can not only cause accidents, but it can also
ruin health, destroy careers, distort personalities, break up marriages - for which
reason no experiment will ever require subjects to consume substantial amounts of