3 ms·

It doesn't say that sugar in juice doesn't cause cancer, it says they didn't find a link. The article says "He points out that of the 140 cases, 110 of those p

It doesn't say that sugar in juice doesn't cause cancer, it says they didn't find a link. The article says "He points out that of the 140 cases, 110 of those people did not drink sodas, while 12 had less than two servings a week, and 18 had two or more servings a week." So there were only 18/140 people who had 2 or more servings of soda/week. You have to have a good and strong link to find a significant association with those numbers. I would assume the number of juice drinkers would be smaller than the number of soda drinkers, so you would need an even stronger link, so it's very possible that a link of the same strength would not show up as significant. You'd have to look at the actual study to see if this is plausible (I haven't). Other possibilities are that juice has some protective properties that nullify sugar's cancer risk, or that something other than sugar causes the problem in sodas, but I would judge those as less likely.

houseabsolute 17y ago
What does the difference in cancer development have to be with samples these small to find a statistically significant association?
- rsheridan6 17y ago
  It has nothing to do with cancer development, everything to do with finding the association between a risk factor and cancer development. Think of a biased coin that tends to come up heads too often. If it does it every time, you don't need to flip it very many times to figure out beyond a reasonable doubt that it's biased. But if it comes up heads 6 times out of 10, you will have to flip it a lot to be sure that it's bias and not just chance. In medicine most associations are more like the latter case than the former. I'm speculating that the juice sample is like a too-short run of flips on a slightly/moderately biased coin that's and therefore can't show an association, and the soda sample is like an adequately long run of flips on a similar coin. The sugar in juice is about the same as the sugar in soda, so this seems like the most plausible explanation.

houseabsolute 17y ago

What does the difference in cancer development have to be with samples these small to find a statistically significant association?

rsheridan6 17y ago
It has nothing to do with cancer development, everything to do with finding the association between a risk factor and cancer development. Think of a biased coin that tends to come up heads too often. If it does it every time, you don't need to flip it very many times to figure out beyond a reasonable doubt that it's biased. But if it comes up heads 6 times out of 10, you will have to flip it a lot to be sure that it's bias and not just chance. In medicine most associations are more like the latter case than the former. I'm speculating that the juice sample is like a too-short run of flips on a slightly/moderately biased coin that's and therefore can't show an association, and the soda sample is like an adequately long run of flips on a similar coin. The sugar in juice is about the same as the sugar in soda, so this seems like the most plausible explanation.