[pak]

There's a difference between false positive rate and positive predictive value:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_rate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_negative_predicti...

The latter depends on the prevalence of the test condition in the population, which is one of the major points of the OP.

A test can have a low false positive rate but still have a low positive predictive value if the test condition is sufficiently rare (as it is for most diseases). brianwawok was probably referring to tests with a low positive predictive value.

[sigmar]

All very true. Perhaps he mistyped, not sure. I'm just pointing out what was written and factually inaccurate.