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that it guarantees that the subjects in each group are initially equivalent in every

conceivable respect - equivalent in male-female ratio, in age, in health, in income, in

diet, in smoking, in drug use, and so on. That is the magic of random assignment, and

we ca

To groups that enjoy pre-treatment equality, the experimenter administers his treatment.

After constituting his random groups, the experimenter would require the subjects in

each group to drink different volumes of wine each day over many years - let us say over

the course of 30 years. Subjects assigned to the zero-glass group would be required to

drink no wine. Subjects assigned to the 1-glass group would be required to drink one

glass of wine each day. Subjects assigned to the 2-glass group would be required to

drink two glasses of wine each day. And so on up to, say, a 10-glass group, which given

that we started with a zero-glass group gives us the 11 groups that I started out

positing that we would need. As the experiment progressed, the number dying in each

group as well as the cause of death, and the health of those still alive, would be

monitored periodically.

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

alcohol over extended periods of time. The possibility of harm, and thus of law suits,

can even be conceived at the low end of the alcohol-consumption continuum. That is, a

subject prohibited from drinking any alcohol might argue that this for him u

unaccustomed regimen changed his personality, undermined his career, and ruined his

marriage, and with this claim in hand, could readily find a lawyer willing to help him

sue for damages.

And if such an experiment had ever been conducted, it would

be invalid

Manipulating long-term alcohol consumption in an experiment would fail to meet the

double-blind requirement. And although we are certain that an experiment manipulating

alcohol consumption over an extended period has never been conducted, even if it were

conducted, it would nevertheless contain inescapable flaws which would stand in the way

of permitting cause-effect conclusions. For example, you may be aware that the best

experiments are ones that are "double-blind." A "blind" experiment is one in which the

subjects do not know what experimental condition they are in - they might not know, for

example, whether the pill they are swallowing contains a curative drug, or only a

placebo. In our alcohol experiment, they would not know whether the liquid they were

drinking was wine, or only some wine-colored and wine-flavored water that had been

sealed in wine bottles. Already, we see the impossibility of our wine experiment being

even so much as blind. Just about every subject in our wine experiment would

immediately realize what it was that he was drinking. Tinted water is clearly

distinguishable by its appearance and taste and effect from wine. A blind wine

experiment, then, is an utter impossibility. Most subjects would be able to quickly

infer approximately what experimental condition they had been placed into.

A "double-blind" experiment would be one in which neither the subject nor the

experimenter knew what experimental condition any particular subject was in. For

example, the experimenter hands the subject a capsule, but does not himself know until

the experiment is over whether that capsule contains a curative drug or only a placebo.

In our alcohol experiment, a double-blind experiment would involve the experimenter