Just in case you wondered...

This article is a fairly standard one.  It reports some new statistics (from new sources) which mean basically the same thing we've known for a while:  obesity, high levels of alcohol, and lack of exercise all raise the probability of getting some form of cancer.  This is not news:  it is commonly accepted in the medical community, due to the high number of studies on the subject which largely reached the same conclusions.  Mos reasonable medical professionals will not only not debate this finding, the will use it when making diagnoses.  Trying to debate this finding, no matter how you do it, is pretty much going to make you look like an idiot, because you're denying not just this one study, but decades scientific studies.

Or, to put it another way...  If a large number of pranksters tell you that you have a spot on your face, you can choose disbelieve them; after all, they're not very reliable.  If a generally reliable friend tells you that you have a spot on your face, you can choose to disbelieve him (or her); after all, there's only one of him (or her).  However, if a lot of your generally-reliable friends tell you that you have a spot on your face, denying it is pretty much just willful at that point.

The number and quality of studies done on the subject are more like that last situation.

Now read the comments for the article.  They range from complete agreement to complete disagreement, with stops along the way at Blamingville, Denial Street, and "But What About the Pesticides?" Station.  What they don't include is, generally, an understanding of what is actually being said:

It's not saying that "If you're fat you will get cancer."  It is saying that "If you're fat you are more likely to get cancer than if you were not."

It's not saying that "skinny people don't get cancer."  Obviously, they do; however, the likelihood of it is much lower.

It's not saying "People who get cancer are to blame for getting cancer."  For one thing, likelihood is not the same as certainty.  For another thing, no one is dumb enough to blame cancer patients for their own condition. 

Unless it's lung cancer, and they smoked, in which case, unspoken though it may be, that sort of blaming does happen sometimes.  On the other hand, there is increasing evidence that the link between obesity and certain forms of cancer is similar.  (Although not the same, and it's not all forms of cancer.)  So maybe in the future, people will be saying that.

However, that's not what was said in the article, and if people are reacting to this article as if it had been said, perhaps they're protesting too much.