6 ms·

Are lung cancer rates up? Obviously eliminating or reducing the primary cause will lead to larger percentages of the other causes among cases.

_mlbt 1y ago
On the surface, the data from the American Lung Association appears to support that hypothesis... https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-cancer-trends-brief/lung-cancer-prevalence-and-incidence-(1) https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-ca...
- bamboozled 1y ago
  The graph seems to shoe me it's peaked and is back on the way down ?
dinfinity 1y ago
Yes, also, the base rate of smoking in different groups is important to take into consideration to prevent the base rate fallacy. Very few Chinese American women smoke (~2%), so if smokers and non-smokers have the same chance of getting lung cancer not caused by smoking, then the number of non-smokers with lung cancer will be a larger proportion. If 100% of some group would be non-smokers, then obviously 100% of lung cancer cases in that group will be in non-smokers. It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated.
- blueflow 1y ago
  > It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated. Whats the correct interpretation of this?
  - d1sxeyes 1y ago
    It’s difficult to give any accurate interpretation of, because it’s not a meaningful statistic. For example, every person hospitalised from COVID-19 had consumed water at some point in preceding months. It’s not evidence that water causes severe complications from COVID-19.
    - dinfinity 1y ago
      No, this is incorrect and misleading. It is a meaningful statistic when interpreted right. See sibling comment.
      - d1sxeyes 1y ago
        In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful. Sibling comment is thoughtful and helpful but adds information not present in OP’s statement (base rate). Edit: ah, you are OP. Just swap “OP” for “you” :)
        dinfinity 1y ago
        > In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful. This is an overly literal, pedantic, and ungenerous interpretation of what I said. Clearly the actual numbers as well as the base rates for the relevant groups are necessary to meaningfully interpret the statistic, but I was hinting at a similar case after describing the logic for the original case, not exhaustively describing the similar case.
        d1sxeyes 1y ago
        Wasn’t my intention to be overly pedantic and certainly not ungenerous. I’m sorry.
        1718627440 1y ago
        You need to drink water to still be alive. You need to be alive to die from covid. Voila drinking water causes covid deaths.
  - Lex-2008 1y ago
    Let's start with an extreme example: each day more people die in traffic accidents, than by falling from a 10-story building. But still, we all can agree that driving a car is safer than falling from a building. Why? Because driving a car you get more chance to get to your destination safely than falling from a building. ChatGPT estimates 0.01% chance to die in car accident per year, when driving every day, and 90-99% to die when falling from a building, once. However, since there are many millions of people who drive a car every day, multiplying very little chance to die in car crash by millions of people, we get thousands of traffic-related death per day. Compare that to single-digit number of people falling from buildings, even if all of them die from it. Back to Covid, let's imagine a village with simple numbers like this: 10 people were NOT vaccinated, 100 people WERE vaccinated. Of 10 people who were NOT vaccinated, all 10 got hospitalized. Of 100 people who WERE vaccinated, 20 got hospitalized. _Correct_ way to look at this village would be: ALL people who were NOT vaccinated, got hospitalized - 100% hospitalization rate. But among those who WERE vaccinated, only 20% got hospitalized. Hence, it's better to be vaccinated - this way you'll get 80% chance of not being hospitalized :) I'm not a real statistician, and don't have actual numbers on hand, but situation with real world numbers is similar: among people who were vaccinated, less percent were hospitalized than among those who were not. It's just that we had so many many vaccinated people, that their small hospitalization rate, when multiplied by total number of vaccinated people, outweighs number of not-vaccinated and hospitalized people.
    - dinfinity 1y ago
      Yep, pretty much this. More information found by searching for "base rate fallacy" or just the Wikipedia page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
      - blueflow 1y ago
        Cool. I didn't know the effect of the vaccine is so poor, that you now need to account for statistical biases to see its effect at all. That's less than what i was told, and I'm not happy. Honestly what a shit vaccine. Measles and Tetanus vax did better.
cbsmith 1y ago
Yeah, this title for the article is really terrible. The "why" that scientists are investigating is not why many lung cancers aren't in nonsmokers. The "why" they are investigating is "why are these non smokers getting cancer?". Once smoking stops being such a dominant cause, you put more energy into the other cases.
- irrational 1y ago
  It would be radon, wouldn’t it?
  - gerdesj 1y ago
    ... well that is irrational
    - asgraham 1y ago
      I can’t find any complete numbers (most prevalent factors after smoking would be environmental, and therefore underreported, especially when as hard to detect as radon), but national health agencies tend to put the Radon section second, after Smoking [1,2]. An uncited figure on a Hopkins webpage suggests 30% of non-smoking lung cancer cases are caused by Radon [3]. Among the well-known environmental factors (asbestos, secondhand smoke), it seems to be about equal for risk increase [4]. Given that asbestos and secondhand smoke are on the decline, it stands to reason that radon will tend toward being the top cause, barring a rise in prevalence of one of the disease risk factors (asthma, pneumonia, HIV, tuberculosis). Of course this is all moot because vaping will be revealed to be the current #1 cause of lung cancer in the coming decades, by a long shot. No citation necessary. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/lung-cancer/risk-factors/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/lung-cancer/risk-factors/index.html [2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/causes/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/causes/ [3] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/lung-cancer/lung-cancer-risk-factors https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas... [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6777859/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6777859/
      - 1y ago
calf 1y ago
Except reducing the first cause does nothing about whether air pollution is a nontrivial factor. And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article. Besides the base rate fallacy there is the fallacy of assuming only the biggest factor is what matters, when other factors are nontrivial weights already. Another fallacy is the fallacy of relativizing a problem framing by insisting on comparison with an obsolete problem --campaigns against smoking have done a lot, so why are we still comparing today's problems against the problems of the 20th century. It smacks of "well, things were even worse back then", which surely the base rate fallacy is not trying to suggest.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
  I do wonder if non-smokers are segregated based on second hand exposure: have a parent/spouse who smokes. Casino employees may have to spend a full shift bathed in smoke.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article. I read the article, but I can't tell if there's a real problem or not. Having "nonsmokers accounts for 10% - 25% of lung cancer worldwide" doesn't leave me any wiser or more informed. Maybe I missed it in the article, so the rest of my comment is pointless, but ... What's the percentage of lung cancer in nonsmokers? 10% of the pop? 1%? 0.00001%? Whatever the answer is, why isn't it in the article? Then we can see what "10% - 25% of $BASE_RATE" actually is. If we're seeing "10%-25% of 0.0001%", then that sorta tracks as fine, TBH. The article seems almost designed to mislead: What's the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers? What's the base rate of lung cancer in smokers? For example, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is 0.1%, then I don't see a problem here; funds directed to eliminating the remaining causes of lung cancer will be better spent on other research. OTOH, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is %15, then I see a real problem here: maybe we need to direct more research funds towards lung cancer[1]. My expectation is that, with smoking so rare, lung cancer in the combined population must be very low, compared with the time when smoking was not rare. ----------------------------------- [1] Actually the problem is worse than that: if there was a singular cause for that 15% in my example, then we it would have been cheaper to target that cause instead of spending dollars reducing smoking.
llm_nerd 1y ago
>Are lung cancer rates up? Incidence rates have been steadily dropping, in many areas by over 50% from 1990. Mortality rates have fallen faster still. So yes, it isn't that other things picked up, but that as smoking has become a fringe other causes proportion naturally increases.

_mlbt 1y ago

On the surface, the data from the American Lung Association appears to support that hypothesis... https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-cancer-trends-brief/lung-cancer-prevalence-and-incidence-(1) https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-ca...

bamboozled 1y ago
The graph seems to shoe me it's peaked and is back on the way down ?

dinfinity 1y ago

Yes, also, the base rate of smoking in different groups is important to take into consideration to prevent the base rate fallacy. Very few Chinese American women smoke (~2%), so if smokers and non-smokers have the same chance of getting lung cancer not caused by smoking, then the number of non-smokers with lung cancer will be a larger proportion. If 100% of some group would be non-smokers, then obviously 100% of lung cancer cases in that group will be in non-smokers. It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated.

blueflow 1y ago
> It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated. Whats the correct interpretation of this?
- d1sxeyes 1y ago
  It’s difficult to give any accurate interpretation of, because it’s not a meaningful statistic. For example, every person hospitalised from COVID-19 had consumed water at some point in preceding months. It’s not evidence that water causes severe complications from COVID-19.
  - dinfinity 1y ago
    No, this is incorrect and misleading. It is a meaningful statistic when interpreted right. See sibling comment.
    - d1sxeyes 1y ago
      In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful. Sibling comment is thoughtful and helpful but adds information not present in OP’s statement (base rate). Edit: ah, you are OP. Just swap “OP” for “you” :)
      - dinfinity 1y ago
        > In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful. This is an overly literal, pedantic, and ungenerous interpretation of what I said. Clearly the actual numbers as well as the base rates for the relevant groups are necessary to meaningfully interpret the statistic, but I was hinting at a similar case after describing the logic for the original case, not exhaustively describing the similar case.
        d1sxeyes 1y ago
        Wasn’t my intention to be overly pedantic and certainly not ungenerous. I’m sorry.
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        You need to drink water to still be alive. You need to be alive to die from covid. Voila drinking water causes covid deaths.
- Lex-2008 1y ago
  Let's start with an extreme example: each day more people die in traffic accidents, than by falling from a 10-story building. But still, we all can agree that driving a car is safer than falling from a building. Why? Because driving a car you get more chance to get to your destination safely than falling from a building. ChatGPT estimates 0.01% chance to die in car accident per year, when driving every day, and 90-99% to die when falling from a building, once. However, since there are many millions of people who drive a car every day, multiplying very little chance to die in car crash by millions of people, we get thousands of traffic-related death per day. Compare that to single-digit number of people falling from buildings, even if all of them die from it. Back to Covid, let's imagine a village with simple numbers like this: 10 people were NOT vaccinated, 100 people WERE vaccinated. Of 10 people who were NOT vaccinated, all 10 got hospitalized. Of 100 people who WERE vaccinated, 20 got hospitalized. _Correct_ way to look at this village would be: ALL people who were NOT vaccinated, got hospitalized - 100% hospitalization rate. But among those who WERE vaccinated, only 20% got hospitalized. Hence, it's better to be vaccinated - this way you'll get 80% chance of not being hospitalized :) I'm not a real statistician, and don't have actual numbers on hand, but situation with real world numbers is similar: among people who were vaccinated, less percent were hospitalized than among those who were not. It's just that we had so many many vaccinated people, that their small hospitalization rate, when multiplied by total number of vaccinated people, outweighs number of not-vaccinated and hospitalized people.
  - dinfinity 1y ago
    Yep, pretty much this. More information found by searching for "base rate fallacy" or just the Wikipedia page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
    - blueflow 1y ago
      Cool. I didn't know the effect of the vaccine is so poor, that you now need to account for statistical biases to see its effect at all. That's less than what i was told, and I'm not happy. Honestly what a shit vaccine. Measles and Tetanus vax did better.

cbsmith 1y ago

Yeah, this title for the article is really terrible. The "why" that scientists are investigating is not why many lung cancers aren't in nonsmokers. The "why" they are investigating is "why are these non smokers getting cancer?". Once smoking stops being such a dominant cause, you put more energy into the other cases.

irrational 1y ago
It would be radon, wouldn’t it?
- gerdesj 1y ago
  ... well that is irrational
  - asgraham 1y ago
    I can’t find any complete numbers (most prevalent factors after smoking would be environmental, and therefore underreported, especially when as hard to detect as radon), but national health agencies tend to put the Radon section second, after Smoking [1,2]. An uncited figure on a Hopkins webpage suggests 30% of non-smoking lung cancer cases are caused by Radon [3]. Among the well-known environmental factors (asbestos, secondhand smoke), it seems to be about equal for risk increase [4]. Given that asbestos and secondhand smoke are on the decline, it stands to reason that radon will tend toward being the top cause, barring a rise in prevalence of one of the disease risk factors (asthma, pneumonia, HIV, tuberculosis). Of course this is all moot because vaping will be revealed to be the current #1 cause of lung cancer in the coming decades, by a long shot. No citation necessary. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/lung-cancer/risk-factors/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/lung-cancer/risk-factors/index.html [2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/causes/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/causes/ [3] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/lung-cancer/lung-cancer-risk-factors https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas... [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6777859/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6777859/
    - 1y ago

calf 1y ago

Except reducing the first cause does nothing about whether air pollution is a nontrivial factor. And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article. Besides the base rate fallacy there is the fallacy of assuming only the biggest factor is what matters, when other factors are nontrivial weights already. Another fallacy is the fallacy of relativizing a problem framing by insisting on comparison with an obsolete problem --campaigns against smoking have done a lot, so why are we still comparing today's problems against the problems of the 20th century. It smacks of "well, things were even worse back then", which surely the base rate fallacy is not trying to suggest.

0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
I do wonder if non-smokers are segregated based on second hand exposure: have a parent/spouse who smokes. Casino employees may have to spend a full shift bathed in smoke.
lelanthran 1y ago
> And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article. I read the article, but I can't tell if there's a real problem or not. Having "nonsmokers accounts for 10% - 25% of lung cancer worldwide" doesn't leave me any wiser or more informed. Maybe I missed it in the article, so the rest of my comment is pointless, but ... What's the percentage of lung cancer in nonsmokers? 10% of the pop? 1%? 0.00001%? Whatever the answer is, why isn't it in the article? Then we can see what "10% - 25% of $BASE_RATE" actually is. If we're seeing "10%-25% of 0.0001%", then that sorta tracks as fine, TBH. The article seems almost designed to mislead: What's the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers? What's the base rate of lung cancer in smokers? For example, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is 0.1%, then I don't see a problem here; funds directed to eliminating the remaining causes of lung cancer will be better spent on other research. OTOH, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is %15, then I see a real problem here: maybe we need to direct more research funds towards lung cancer[1]. My expectation is that, with smoking so rare, lung cancer in the combined population must be very low, compared with the time when smoking was not rare. ----------------------------------- [1] Actually the problem is worse than that: if there was a singular cause for that 15% in my example, then we it would have been cheaper to target that cause instead of spending dollars reducing smoking.

llm_nerd 1y ago

>Are lung cancer rates up? Incidence rates have been steadily dropping, in many areas by over 50% from 1990. Mortality rates have fallen faster still. So yes, it isn't that other things picked up, but that as smoking has become a fringe other causes proportion naturally increases.