O-70 - Taken as lifelong causal, meta-analyzed cohort estimates imply implausible life-expectancy effects including minus 6 years for one egg per day
An arithmetic illustration Ioannidis derives from published meta-analyzed cohort estimates (external data, none of his own): the conditional ‘if these hazard ratios are lifelong causal, then…’ is uncontested arithmetic; the egg figure (−6 years/day) is directly on the main question. The implied magnitudes are individually implausible and cannot all hold jointly (one cannot simultaneously gain 12 y from hazelnuts, 12 y from coffee, and 5 y from a mandarin against an 80-year baseline).
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Why this is evidence
If the harmful egg cohort estimate (H-27) or a large protective one (H-6) were lifelong-causal, the implied magnitude (about -6 years of life expectancy per daily egg, alongside mutually incompatible figures for other foods) is implausible — which is the expected consequence under H-21/H-49, where such cohort associations are confounded/non-causal rather than causal. It therefore lowers P(obs) under a strong causal reading (H-6, H-27) relative to the null/residual, discriminating the causal-verdict members from the null.