4 ms·
A better wording is that your chance of having the disease if given a positive result from the test is 1/10000 (0.1%). That's a huge increase from a 0.0001% ch
by tel 18y ago
A better wording is that your chance of having the disease if given a positive result from the test is 1/10000 (0.1%).
That's a huge increase from a 0.0001% chance of having the disease, but it's still not flat out terrifying. Repeat testing can weed through the false positives at a speed proportional to its accuracy.
- graywh 18y agoNot necessarily. If you get the same results every time, repeated testing provides nothing.
- DougBTX 18y agoIt depends on what causes the false positives. If the test is picking up something in the person being tested, then yes, you'll get the same result every time and repeated testing proves nothing. But you can still repeat using other tests. If the test gives false positives purely at random, then repeated testing will help. Say the test is wrong 50% of the time, and you do the test five times. If you get the same results every time, then you can be 100-(50/100)^5*100 = 97% sure of the results.