I disagree with what appears to be the basic premise of that blog post (and much of the media reporting of it). As I understand it, the guidelines are not about telling us not to drink more than 14 units a week, but telling us that if you do drink 14 units a week, you increase your lifetime risk of death by 1%. So this isn't a lowering of the drink limit (as has been widely reported, along with accusations of a nanny state), but giving us the information on the risk so we can make decisions for ourselves depending on whether we want to take that risk or not. It's changing the way Government guidance is presented so it becomes
less prescriptive.
The data are complicated and I understand very little of them. I've tried to plough through Adam's analysis and found it too heavy going for me. There way well be an argument about how Davies came to her conclusion and how it's presented, but I think we'll need to wait and see whether she responds to the criticisms. However, does anyone feel they are completely wrong?
I think that how complex data like that are presented to the public is very interesting. In this case, probably very few will understand all the data. Spiegelhalter has condensed that down to Medicine, poison, poison, poison, … but it seems even that simple message is too complicated for some journalists.