[cbr]

>patients are known to be highly inconsistent when reporting their own alcohol consumption. Answers patients provide depend on many factors, including the doctor-patient relationship. And patients’ spouses often disagree with their partners’ assessment of their drinking. The MACH15 trial had some sophistication built in to it, including the use of random smartphone-based check-ins for patients. But while some evidence suggests that smartphone-based self-reporting on alcohol consumption often contradicts patients hindsight reports, MACH15 had no ability to tease out which patients would adhere to the smartphone check-ins, and which were providing accurate accounts of their consumption. In essence, the NIH was making a $100 million gamble that volunteers would portray their alcohol consumption accurately.

This doesn't seem like a problem with the study design to me. You're effectively assessing the effect of telling people to drink "zero" vs "moderate" alcohol as opposed to the the effect of actually drinking those quantities, but since one major use for a study like this is to figure out what doctors should be telling people this still seems valuable.

[Spooky23]

There’s too much judgement in the standards. If you admit to very moderate social alcohol consumption, you’ll get tagged as an abuser. Risky move these days.

[RandomInteger4]

While I disagree and think your assessment is a bit hyperbolic, I do see that there may be some stigma in whether patients admit to their doctor that they drink. My dad apparently lied to his doctor quite a bit about his junk food consumption prior to his double bypass. Patients feel guilty about things they know or think to be unhealthy and for some reason think that lying will help them in any way. It's weird. Like, why are people more afraid of what some random person thinks than they are of seriously fucking up their doctor's ability to treat them?