3 ms·
I end up seeing a lot of these discussions and you can always tell the difference between a person who doesn't know much math but works in the field, to somebod
by dekhn 3y ago
I end up seeing a lot of these discussions and you can always tell the difference between a person who doesn't know much math but works in the field, to somebody who knows a lot of math but doesn't work in the field. Experience and wisdom matter a lot wrt drug discovery and cancer treatment.
- vikramkr 3y agoWhat's funny is that the paper has the statistics. The original point is sort of valid in that narrowly speaking, there's probably been other cancer trials with similar response rates. Sticking with that specific argument then yeah that claim is probably exaggerated for clicks. But that's a claim about this study compared to other studies. Doesn't have anything to do with the actual effectiveness of the drug or the statistics of the study! I don't think it's just experience and wisdom - it's also the math lol this is plenty enough to get a strong insight into causality. Colorectal cancer doesn't exactly tend to go into spontaneous remission that often...
- dekhn 3y agoWhen a press release says "all 12 patients went into full remission", you can be sure that the PR authors truly want you to believe that the drug had the effect of curing all the patients.
- vikramkr 3y agoThe press release is obviously overselling (also remission != cure), but that's separate from the statistics of the study and it's design and the significance of the results. It's almost always a safe bet to just ignore press releases entirely and jump straight to the paper.