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The title is technically accurate, but you have to take into account uninformed people's priors in order to efficiently convey information that might update the
by asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
The title is technically accurate, but you have to take into account uninformed people's priors in order to efficiently convey information that might update their beliefs. Just my personal opinion on this issue. If you say "new technique [X] has [high] false positive rate," you're going to make people who don't know the status quo think there is a deficit in the new technique. Also, I'm not just talking about the title.
- rkangel 5y agoYes, the article seemed to be making two different points and got a little directionless as a result: * Half of all women will get false positives - that's a lot, it's not great, people will think they have cancer and we should set expectations * Despite the introduction of a newer technology to improve false positives (3D scanning) we've only improved the situation from 56% to 50%
- labcomputer 5y ago> only improved the situation from 56% to 50% But isn't that millions of fewer false positive results over 10 years? Assumptions: * US Women: ~150e6 * Fraction getting annual mamograms: ~1/3 (life expectancy of 80yrs, and mamograms during 30 of those years, minus some with poor access to health care) * Reduction in cumulative FP rate over 10 year period: 6% 150e6 x 0.33 * 0.06 = ~3e6 fewer false positive results over a 10 year period. That seems like a significant effect size to me.
- Dylan16807 5y agoIt's significant but it's also pathetic. The false positive rate is really high.