Blogs

Heart disease screening: where did the uncertainty go?

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Submitted by kevin on Tue, 10/05/2011 - 1:19pm

The UK news media have reported quite extensively a newly published paper by Wald, Simmonds and Morris on screening for cardiovascular disease (CVD) - that is, disease of the heart and blood vessels (principally heart attacks and strokes). The paper concluded that screening should be based on the patient's age alone, and not on other risk factors for CVD. But I'm not going to examine the conclusion - I'm interested in the way the authors dealt with uncertainty.

Paul the Octopus: soon to hit the silver screen

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Submitted by david on Sat, 07/05/2011 - 2:30pm

Just up on Youtube is the trailer for the forthcoming feature film about Paul the 'Psychic' Octopus (RIP): not only does it feature DJS explaining the mathematics of Paul, but it includes Bayes theorem. And it is in Tentacular 2D!

Do mobile phones cause brain cancer?

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Submitted by kevin on Sat, 16/04/2011 - 1:14pm

The New York Times has published an excellent (well, I thought so) article called Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?. What's particularly good about it is the clear but thorough way that it explains the problems of looking for causes of rare diseases, and describes the methods used for dealing with uncertainty in this challenging context.

Statistical significance, ESP and the law: what's all that about?

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Submitted by kevin on Sat, 16/04/2011 - 12:27pm

Statistical significance testing is one of the commonest formal ways of handling some kinds of uncertainty, but arguably it's one of the most misunderstood. We've posted a new article about statistical significance, in the context of some very controversial psychological experiments about extra-sensory perception (ESP).

Time to cut down on the booze?

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Submitted by david on Wed, 13/04/2011 - 1:51pm

The recent study on alcohol and cancer published in the British Medical Journal is a fine piece of epidemiology and attracted a lot of coverage of the estimate that 10% of male cancers and 3% of female cancers could be attributed to alcohol. But while it is useful as a description of what happens in populations, as usual when translated to an individual it stops looking so impressive.

A disastrous piece of risk communication?

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Submitted by david on Wed, 13/04/2011 - 12:26pm

Yesterday’s announcement that the Fukushima accident was now upgraded to a Level 7 was greeted with some consternation, since this is not only the same level as Chernobyl but as high as the scale can go – there is no Level 8. But is this scale really fit for its purpose?

Significance testing: a picture (well, cartoon) is worth 1000 words.

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Submitted by kevin on Wed, 06/04/2011 - 9:35am

Statistical significance testing is a pretty tricky concept. We're planning to post an article on it soon, but until we get round to it, here's a link to something excellent on the topic from the xkcd Web comic. They're illustrating exactly what people misunderstand. Maybe we needn't bother with the article after all...

Screening for disease: why it's controversial

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Submitted by kevin on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 2:21pm

Screening for disease was in the news again in the UK last week. According to the BBC, a 20-year Swedish study of screening for prostate cancer showed that screening brought no benefit. (The actual study report didn't put it quite so baldly, but effectively did conclude there was no benefit.) This came just a couple of days after the Alzheimer's Disease Society asked that the NHS should offer checks for dementia to everyone (in the UK) when they reach the age of 75. Both these news items reported contrasting views on whether these screening checks are in fact advisable.

Spanish school books: can we believe what they say about health?

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Submitted by kevin on Fri, 25/03/2011 - 1:05pm

Most school textbooks contain messages about health. But there's no known evidence for about a quarter of the messages. At least, that's the position in Granada, Spain, according to a report in BMC Public Health.

Uncertainty in the media: a mixed picture on swine flu

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Submitted by kevin on Fri, 25/03/2011 - 12:02pm

BMC Public Health is one of those online, open access journals that are becoming more and more prominent in academic publishing. A couple of recent articles throw rather different lights on the communication of health messages to the public. One is pretty positive about how Australian television reported the 2009 swine flu epidemic. The other reports an analysis of school books in Spain, and I'll return to that in another blog entry.

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