What if?

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk as part of the University's "What If" lecture series, asking "What if alcohol were not as socially costly as everyone says?" It's now up on the University's site and is embedded below.

There is one question at the end that I handled poorly. An attendee wondered whether the change in the reported binge drinking rates could be due to definitional changes. Because the numbers I was using were using the older and consistent standard, I said that wasn't it. But the reported increases were coming from some more recent reports. And I just don't know whether they were using a consistent standard for binge drinking.