And... sometimes stats and population level studies take a very long time or (more often) are never done at all and so if we only rely on this to tell us what to do, we'll miss a lot.
There are common sense ways to reduce cancer risk that have been obvious to and practiced by many people for a long time, before the studies showed that they were right. For example, all of the many new synthetic materials and chemicals that have been found to be carcinogens. I just assume any novel chemistry exposure is a risk, to eat it, drink it, touch it, breathe it. I can't and don't avoid all of it, but I can avoid a lot of it in terms of dose, compared to people who don't think about this at all.
Science evolves and sometimes it's good to use your brain. You're probably too young to remember science pushing fat and cholesterol being bad, which not-so-helpfully contributed to a massive sugar push in the US in the 80s. And I'm sure you remember the push for mask usage and social distancing during COVID, while science told us that 'racism is a health emergency' to help justify street protests.
It's a good balance to care about science while still maintaining a human brain with independent thoughts.
> It's a good balance to care about science while still maintaining a human brain with independent thoughts.
What do you think science is? The whole point of science is questioning assumptions and applying data gathering and independent thought to analyzing that data.
There are common sense ways to reduce cancer risk that have been obvious to and practiced by many people for a long time, before the studies showed that they were right. For example, all of the many new synthetic materials and chemicals that have been found to be carcinogens. I just assume any novel chemistry exposure is a risk, to eat it, drink it, touch it, breathe it. I can't and don't avoid all of it, but I can avoid a lot of it in terms of dose, compared to people who don't think about this at all.