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It's also why "early detection leads to longer survival" claims in cancer patients has to be treated with quite some care. Two people develop a fatal cancer at
by Earw0rm 1y ago
It's also why "early detection leads to longer survival" claims in cancer patients has to be treated with quite some care.
Two people develop a fatal cancer at T0. One is diagnosed at T1, the other at T2, both die at T3.
It looks like the first person survived longer with cancer than the second, but they didn't: the interventions had no effect, it's just a statistical artifact.
This is by no means always the case - earlier detected cancer is more treatable - but it still needs to be controlled for.
- chiefalchemist 1y agoAnd of course there’s always a riff on the placebo effect even when the intervention isn’t sugar pills. That is, success gets attributed to the approved intervention, but at the nuts & bolts level it had little or no effect. The body cured itself but the treatment gets the credit.