Pamela, What an odd question... Don't you know that your initial chances of getting THAT type of cancer are less than 20% from the start?!? If you can find just one thing to lower your changes by twenty percent, that puts you into the negative probability range, and you can worry about other things.
Eric On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 07:38 AM, Pamela McCorduck <[email protected]> wrote: >The NYer can be obtuse about scientific topics, but this article intrigued me. Is the decline effect real? > > >It's certainly the case that many medical practitioners follow outdated advice. And the use of statistics in medicine (to be sure, a special subset of science) can be awkward. I keep asking people: if I've lowered my chances by twenty percent of contracting a certain cancer by doing thus-and-so, and I find four other thus-and-so's to also do, does that mean I'll never get that cancer? No one can answer.> > > >> >On Dec 12, 2010, at 5:58 AM, <#> wrote: >>On 12 Dec 2010 at 0:46, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > >At least until recently, when the NY-er writes about science, they try very > hard not to write anything stupid. > >What??? Have you forgotten the whole disgraceful >Paul Brodeur episode? Refresh your memory by reading ><<http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN10/wn121010.html>>. >Worse than stupid, verging on criminal, given the >amount of money it's caused to be thrown away and >the amount of anxiety it's generated or caused to >be misplaced. > >I haven't yet read the "decline effect" article, and >am not commenting on it, just on your quoted sentence >above. > > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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