Is thinking critical?

I am something of a grumpy old man! I believe we should examine critically much of the information which comes our way and ask ourselves questions such as: Do I believe this? is the analysis valid? Is the premise valid? I mention this on foot of an article in Drinks Business in relation to world wide beer consumption as reported by the World Health organisation (WHO).
Now, I have no doubt that alcohol harms are a serious issue but I wondered about the conclusions of this report. Palau is a tiny Pacific island with a population of 21,000 and, apparently, a per capita (pc) beer consumption of 8.68 litres.
Now, maybe this is a lovely place to sit and drink a beer, to the extent that the residents drink more beer than the Czechs (8.51 litres), or us (7.04 litres). FWIW, the Czechs are 2nd according to WHO, with the Seychelles 3rd, then Ireland!
This last piece of information is the one that makes me pause. We've always known that the Czechs were the biggest beer consumers in the world and that we ranked 2nd or 3rd usually. But, Palau? The Seychelles? This made me wonder what these locations have in common - heavy tourism, I should think. Probably their population increases by 200% or more each year with tourists, and I'm assuming that WHO simply dividing total beer sales by census-related figures for over 15s to come up with their consumption data. We get lots of tourists too, but on a larger population base and, indeed, I'd even wonder if we really are the 4th (or 2nd) biggest consumers of beer.
I complain on a regular basis to Drinks Business that they never publish the original data. Every once in while they eventually do, but the immediate effect of such attention grabbing headlines is to distort the real issues. For example, if I were trying to argue against measures such as minimum pricing, say, I could use a silly report such as this to try to discredit far better reports from WHO and other organisations.
Anyway, that's a small rant out of the way - now I fancy a pint!