When I learned about evidence-based medicine (EBM) as an undergraduate, I remember thinking that there were just too many crucial health questions waiting to be answered. There was not enough time for EBM to solve the more banal problems of daily life. How wrong I was. Last week, the British press reported on a topic close to the hearts of millions of men seeking a mate after an evening of drinking [1, 2]. Does alcohol interfere with perception of beauty? The term, "beer goggles", has been used to describe the phenomenon of "alcohol myopia" since the early 1990s. Do “beer goggles” exist? The study apparently showed that there was no evidence for beer goggles and suggested that “the effect of "beer goggles" should not be used as an excuse for men getting a woman's age wrong”. As a diligent EBM practitioner I read the primary research in the May issue of the British Journal of Psychology to check the validity of the study using the PICO format [3]. The population consisted of 120 men and women in Leicester pubs (aged 18-70), who had taken in variable quantities of alcohol, classified as "relaxed and benign", "blunted and disinhibited", "boisterous and over-expressive", and "unambiguously drunk". The blood alcohol concentration was measured using a breathalyser. The intervention involved estimation of the age of women in 10 digital photographs. The photographs were digitally altered to make them appear younger or older. Make-up was also applied digitally to a number of images. The control group consisted of 120 men and women who had not drunk any alcohol. The outcome was that alcohol reduced the ability of women to guess the age of the photo models, but not men. Participants consistently over-estimated the age of both mature and immature faces by an average of 3.5 years, but this observation was regardless of alcohol consumption. The study concluded, “Although alcohol limited the processing of maturity cues in female observers, it had no effect on the age perceptions of males viewing female faces, suggesting male mate preferences are not easily disrupted” On a serious note, the authors also stated “..that even heavy alcohol consumption does not interfere with age-perception tasks in men, so is not of itself an excuse for apparent mistaken age in cases of unlawful sex with a minor.” It turns out that the medical literature is rife with examples of facetious epidemiology. For example, I refer you to a study of mud-wrestling as a cause of dermatitis in American college students [4]. Who said that evidence-based medicine could not be fun?

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1. BBC News. Beer goggles 'don't disguise age'
2. Alleyne R. Beer goggles idea is a myth, claim scientists The Daily Telegraph 19th April 2009
3. Barely legal: Is attraction and estimated age of young female faces disrupted by alcohol use, make up, and the sex of the observer? British Journal of Psychology 2009. 100: 415-427. Egan V, Cordan G.
4. An outbreak of mud-wrestling-induced pustular dermatitis in college students. Dermatitis palaestrae limosae JAMA 1993; 269:502-4. Adler AI, Altman J.