The study tries to account for things like publication bias (though seems to not find any evidence for it or do any accounting for it in 5/6 of the comparisons under study). I don't think it's wise to conclude from the fringe cutting through the x-axis that only shoddy research would claim unprocessed red meat has a health risk (which is to say nothing about processed red meat, the subject of most of the headline-grabbing studies about health risks).
> I don't think it's wise to conclude from the fringe cutting through the x-axis that only shoddy research would claim unprocessed red meat has a health risk
You're right, but they don't claim that. The y-axis here is "relative risk." There's no such thing as "no risk" in these studies.
Practically speaking, of course, there is -- most of us live our lives with "low risk" = "no risk," necessarily.
The takeaway from this figure is exactly what's written in the article: "As shown in Fig. 4, the relationship between unprocessed red meat intake and combined-cause incidence and mortality was increasing across the entire exposure domain."
> The takeaway from this figure is exactly what's written in the article: "As shown in Fig. 4 [...]"
That's from the study that I didn't criticize, not the bigthink article that I do criticize. The claims about "shoddy research" and "not a health risk" are from the bigthink article, not the study. If bigthink rewrote the article to focus on the quotation you provided, it would be far more informative.
Edit: And to somewhat address your point about relative risk (RR). If someone told me that an activity had almost no upside health risk, and a wide range of downside health risk, I would not think "no health risk" is an appropriate summary statement. Again, this is a criticism of the bigthink (or really, RealClearScience) article.
The study tries to account for things like publication bias (though seems to not find any evidence for it or do any accounting for it in 5/6 of the comparisons under study). I don't think it's wise to conclude from the fringe cutting through the x-axis that only shoddy research would claim unprocessed red meat has a health risk (which is to say nothing about processed red meat, the subject of most of the headline-grabbing studies about health risks).