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).
Link to original
Why this is evidence
Taken as lifelong causal the meta-analyzed cohort HRs imply individually implausible, mutually incompatible magnitudes. H-31 takes this reductio as marking the estimates bias-driven rather than causal; H-41 treats the lifelong-causal extrapolation as a strawman and the underlying estimates as valid but not meant to be extrapolated that way.