I don't think I'm going to take my health advice from an economics magazine that is published by libertarians in the UK (a famously NOT sunny place).
Economists have a habit of wandering off into other fields and misapplying statistical methods developed for economics. See their work in anti-parastic studies and all sorts of gross wannabe sociology research.
I'll wait until Chocrane steps in and says something before rejecting decades of scientific consensus.
I think this assessment is unfair. The paper [1] is not from economists. The first author is an endocrinologist. The third author is a dermatologist. As for where the authors are from, I don't see why it would matter, as long as their methodology is sound.
However, this doesn't mean one should forget about the current consensus. This is just one paper, and it takes more than that to offset the current knowledge.
The actual scientists have a much more limited outlook on the potential impact of this line of research, but The Economist's headline does not. This sort of hyperbole is very Freakonomics and will be used by people who really like the sun as evidence that it's better to not wear sunscreen.
It's gross to see them weighing in on this topic at all.
Economists have a habit of wandering off into other fields and misapplying statistical methods developed for economics. See their work in anti-parastic studies and all sorts of gross wannabe sociology research.
I'll wait until Chocrane steps in and says something before rejecting decades of scientific consensus.