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by apolretom 3636 days ago
> Over all, though, about 25 percent of cancer in women and 33 percent in men was potentially preventable.

This article is a rather optimistic spin on these numbers. I'd have said "a large majority of cancer cases--75% in women and 67% in men--were not preventable"
2 comments
chias 3636 days ago
Oh, I don't know. On the one hand, part of me agrees with you.

On the other hand, when someone tells me that they've optimized a compiler and it can now compile 3% faster I get really excited and pull their repo, I don't turn around and say "you mean 97% as slow" and keep complaining about how long compilation takes and how nothing can be done about it. Show that there are steps you can take to cut it by 33% more than we currently know how and you'll be a god among programmers.

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sn41 3636 days ago
I agree with your basic point - but doesn't "3% faster" usually mean that it runs faster in all cases? So the "97% as slow" does not seem to be clear. Maybe it should be said as the improvement is not significant enough according to some numerical threshold?
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benmanns 3636 days ago
I think it's closer to "I boosted conversion rates on our sign up page by 33%."

Sure, not every visitor signs up still, but some group of people found the new copy compelling enough to sign up - with no new, very expensive feature development.

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jessriedel 3636 days ago
Perhaps more importantly, a huge fraction of those "preventable" cancers are lung cancers that could only be prevented by giving up smoking.

> Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women; about 1 out of 4 cancer deaths are from lung cancer.

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/lungcancer-non-smallcell/detail...

and from the article:

> About 82 percent of women and 78 percent of men who got lung cancer might have prevented it through healthy behaviors.

Back of the envelope: ~20 percent of all cancer deaths are lung cancer deaths that wouldn't have happened without smoking. That leaves just 5-15% of cancer deaths being "potentially preventable" once you've given up smoking. (Here, I'm not distinguishing between cancer cases and cancer deaths; please point to better data if you have it.)

I'd wager less than 5% of cancer deaths are preventable if you neither smoke nor are overweight.

I think this article, and especially its headline, is highly misleading.

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