The Epidemic of Fake Disease

What people said

jamesbelchamber · 2026-02 · Recommendation

It does, doesn't it! This is basically the reason scepticism in screening has risen (amongst scientists and medics, not the general population) - research seems to show that screening catches much more cancer but doesn't save many more people. Rohin Francis does a good video on it, which you don't have to watch because it has references underneath you can click straight through to (the video is good though): [VIDEO] I am frustrated by this because it seems obvious to me that "more data == better" but I guess it makes sense if you think of the scans as having high amounts of noise, and us having a poor understanding of the system we're monitoring (this never happens in tech, of course :)).

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fooblaster · 2022-09 · Recommendation

I'd encourage you to think about the consequences of over testing. Although it is somewhat counter intuitive, there are many negative consequences to patient outcomes from overtesting. A deeper overview: [VIDEO]

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eru · 2021-12 · Recommendation

Compare and contrast this video from 'Medlife Crisis': [VIDEO] > Trying to detect disease early seems like an obviously good thing to do. But reality isn't always quite so straightforward, especially in medicine. If It Ducks Like A Quack is a series where I try to go beyond the hype and explore how complicated the apparently simple phenomena in medicine are. One point from the video: five year survival rates of prostate cancer in the US are massively better than in the UK. However, roughly the same proportion of people die of prostate cancer in both countries. The US just screens a lot more.

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