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September 30th, 2026 (Permalink)

Pop Quiz

Assuming that the following statements are either true of false, which if any are true?

All of the statements below are true.
None of the statements below is true.
All of the statements above are true.
Only one of the statements above is true.
None of the statements above is true.
None of the statements above is true.

September 18th, 2026 (Permalink)

This Headline Sucks

I was puzzled by the following headline:

Ryanair will dispute passenger's claim he was sucked out of window¹

What puzzled me about this headline is how anyone who was actually sucked out of the window of an airplane could claim anything. This could only happen at high altitude because the cabin is pressurized when a plane is at such an altitude that the atmosphere is becoming too thin². If cabin pressurization is suddenly lost at such an altitude, which would happen if a window failed, the difference in pressure between the cabin and the atmosphere outside the plane could suck someone through the window³. At such an altitude, if a passenger were pulled out of the window, he would surely fall to his death unless he was wearing a parachute. Assuming that the passenger wasn't actually sucked out of the window, what did he claim?

Despite the headline, and as we learn in the article beneath, the passenger claims only that his head and shoulders were sucked out of the window, while his wife held on to his legs to keep him from going completely out. The airline, Ryanair, is counter-claiming that no part of him was ever outside the window; why that matters is not clear.

No doubt brevity is important in headlines but not at the expense of accuracy. There was no necessity for the editor who wrote the above headline to give the impression that a man survived being sucked through an airplane window, as other editors were able to write headlines for their coverage of the same story that included the adverbs "almost", "nearly", or "partially" to modify the verb phrase "sucked out"⁴. In particular, The Grauniad itself, from which the above headline was taken, managed to get it right a couple of months earlier:

Ryanair passenger almost sucked out of shattered window during flight⁵

Despite its unlikeliness, I wondered whether anyone ever survived being sucked out of an airplane window. Here's another headline that sucks:

Yes, a Pilot Really Did Survive Being Sucked Out of an Airplane in 1990⁶

No, Snopes, he really didn't. If you read the article beneath the headline―which I recommend as it's quite fascinating―you find out that the pilot wasn't sucked out of the plane. Like the man in the more recent story, he was partially sucked through the window while other crewmembers held onto his legs until the plane was able to land. If he had gone all the way through the window, he would surely have been killed.

It's rather disappointing that Snopes, of all sites, ran such a tabloid-style headline for its story. I was excited to read how someone was sucked out of a plane by explosive decompression yet somehow survived the fall, only to discover it was much the same story as the Ryanair one.

I've found no evidence that anyone sucked completely out of a pressurized airplane cabin has ever survived. Those who lived through a violent decompression were saved by neighbors who held onto them. Thankfully, such cabin decompressions are so rare that you're more likely to die from drinking the piping hot airline coffee―see the previous entry. Whether the tiny risk of being sucked out of the plane is worth choosing an aisle seat and wearing your seatbelt while in flight, I'll let you decide.

Notes:

↑ Gwyn Topham, "Ryanair will dispute passenger's claim he was sucked out of window", The Grauniad, 9/10/2026
↑ "Ask an Explainer", How Things Fly, 4/14/2012
↑ Jacopo Prisco, "What happens when an airplane cabin suddenly depressurizes?", CNN, 1/14/2024
↑ Here are some examples:
- Jaroslav Lukiv & Theo Leggett, "Man nearly sucked out of window mid-air on Ryanair plane, passengers say", BBC, 7/10/2026
- Tim Hanlon, "Ryanair passenger 'almost sucked through' broken plane window as wife 'clings on'", Mirror, 7/10/2026
- Cillian Sherlock, "Ryanair boss 'disputes' claim passenger was partially sucked out of window", Independent, 9/10/2026
↑ Mark Sweney, "Ryanair passenger almost sucked out of shattered window during flight", The Grauniad, 7/10/2026
↑ Dan MacGuill, "Yes, a Pilot Really Did Survive Being Sucked Out of an Airplane in 1990", Snopes, 3/29/2023

September 13th, 2026 (Permalink)

Very Hot Java Jive

Most of the previous entries in this series on the supposed health effects of coffee have been about claims that coffee is good for you, but rarely a study claims that drinking coffee is the opposite¹. Here's a recent one.

A study claiming that drinking very hot coffee increases the likelihood of cancer of the esophagus has recently been reported by several news outlets². However, according to the study in question, the problem is not with coffee itself, but with drinking any very hot liquid, so that hot tea and hot chocolate are included.

The headline claim is that drinking "scalding" hot beverages can triple the risk of esophageal cancer. Tripling the risk certainly sounds bad, but thrice what? It's a meaningless claim if we don't know what the risk of getting the cancer is for those who don't drink very hot beverages: three times zero is still zero.

The tripling claim is a relative risk or risk ratio (RR), that is, the ratio between the people in the study who drank "very hot" drinks and ended up with cancer of the esophagus to those who didn't drank such hot drinks and still got it. The RR tells us that there were three times as many in the former group as in the latter, but how many were in the latter? Before we can evaluate the RR claim, we need to know the absolute risk (AR) of esophageal cancer, that is, the risk of getting it without drinking superheated beverages³.

Cancer of the esophagus appears to be rare, but how rare? I've known more than one person who had cancer, including a couple who died from it, but I've never met anyone with cancer of the esophagus. The only public figure I've ever heard of who had it was Christopher Hitchens, who died all too young from complications of the cancer⁴. Did Hitchens drink extremely hot coffee or other beverages? I don't know, but he was notorious for smoking cigarettes and drinking copious quantities of alcoholic beverages, presumably cold⁵. As many of the news articles point out, cigarette smoking and drinking alcohol are higher risks for esophageal cancer than drinking very hot beverages.

Now, I'm not saying there's no risk of getting cancer of the esophagus―obviously, there must be some risk―but if the risk is very low then tripling it will produce a risk that is still low, maybe very low. This is important to know because life is inherently risky, and we need to know just how risky an activity is to rationally decide whether to do it. For instance, skydiving is risky, but apparently it's enough of a thrill for some people that it's worth the risk. Similarly, there may be some people who enjoy drinking scalding hot coffee so much that a tripled risk of cancer is worth it for them; Hitchens, for instance, claimed that smoking and drinking were worth not just risking it, but actually getting cancer.

In these entries on how health claims are reported, I'm usually quite critical of the reporting, but most of the reports on this study were better than usual. Of course, that's a low standard since so many news reports of new studies simply rewrite the press release without asking questions. However, some of these reporters interviewed an expert who was not connected to the study itself, who then pointed out that the absolute risk is less than 1%, and that smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol are greater risks than drinking very hot drinks. So, the reporters, to their credit, did some actual reporting.

That said, "less than 1%" still sounded rather high to me, since that would mean one out of a hundred people gets esophageal cancer. Actually, "less than 1%" refers to the percentage of cases of cancer that are of the esophagus, but not everybody gets cancer. What we really need to know is the prevalence of esophageal cancer in the population. It turns out that the rates are quite different for men and women, though both rates are below 1%. For men, it's about .76% and, for women, only around .23%⁶. Putting these two figures together, the prevalence is approximately .5%⁷, which is indeed less than 1%. Tripling this rate by drinking searing-hot coffee leads to a risk of 1.5% for people in general.

Whether this is enough of a risk to justify letting your coffee cool off a bit longer before drinking it, I'll leave to your judgment.