Meta analysis is one thing. Though Kirk identified some of the basic problems with it when presented as a primary scientific endeavour, there’s room for scholarship as well as science in the pure theoretical and experimental senses.

But this sounds like garbage in, garbage out. I need some wine.

What they actually mean here is that survey respondents reported data that makes it seem as though there is a correlation between wine consumption and resistance/exposure to cold viruses. We don’t know for a fact that those self-reported wine drinkers actually drank any wine, any more than we know that they were exposed to similar contagion vectors for the colds in question.

This is a really badly constructed study that actually tells you precisely jack and s**t about whether or not wine helps with your resistance. You would have to have carefully constructed your test participation pool, ensured that they all actually consumed like amounts of alcoholic beverages, and then were a.) in generally similar good immunological health, and b.) were exposed to the same precise vectors of the same rhinoviruses.

None of that was done, so far as I can tell, so this is more statistical flummery thrown up as “news” by the academics, and then reported by the scientifically illiterate news media.

Anything to be learned from this crap is lost in the noise coming from a poorly constructed test methodology, and sheer stupidity.