March 15, 2012

Significant imperfections in cancer screening

The Herald did a good job itself in providing statistics to put today’s front-page story in context

BREAST CANCER

2700 number of new cases in 2008

624 number of deaths in 2008

8: number of women who had something unspecified wrong with their diagnosis, for reasons we don’t give, having unknown impact on their future health, in circumstances that are still being investigated but might not be exciting enough for the front page if we wait for the facts.

 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »