A great
NY
Times Upshot article describes, in normal English, the difference between
mortality and survival rates. They do sound the same, but aren’t. The article
starts out with two cancer studies seem to have reached opposite conclusions.
(These things really bug me because it leads people to throw up their hands and
doubt all science.) Read down to the example of thumb cancer (not a real
thing). I’ll be using this example with my students often.
In a related
Health
Affairs article, researchers estimate that false positive breast cancer
results cost the US health system $4 billion annually in unnecessary treatments
including more imaging, biopsies, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
