It’s hard to argue with a paper written by a Nobel Laureate. But statistician Andrew Gelman is — if not debunking (as he points out in a blog post), at least clarifying — much-reported research that death rates are soaring for middle-aged white Americans.

“Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling,” wrote the New York Times in fairly typical coverage of recently published research by Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case. (Deaton won the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics for his analysis of consumption patterns). The rise, this research found, was due to drug abuse.

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