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> I'm not saying you're doing this, but it's a common trend on HN and for other non-scientist technical people to forget that scientific journals show the proce
by AlexCoventry 9y ago
> I'm not saying you're doing this, but it's a common trend on HN and for other non-scientist technical people to forget that scientific journals show the process of science, not completed science
How much would it have cost them to increase the number of controls? How did they choose 44?
- doctoring 9y agoIt costs a lot, unfortunately. Sequencing is still fairly expensive, and the methods in OP are fairly complex on top of that. There's also the interesting question of: if the test came back positive in a seemingly-healthy control, how would you know if that was a true positive or a false positive? It's still early in the game as to how to work up a cancer detected only in blood. The gold standard is tissue biopsy, but how far are you willing to go to hunt that down? It's a tough one. Source: My spouse is one of the authors of the study in question.
- AlexCoventry 9y ago> if the test came back positive in a seemingly-healthy control, how would you know if that was a true positive or a false positive? You can estimate the likelihood from cancer prevalance.