[orting]

A specific critique raised in the press release from IARC is that the study has an

"emphasis on very rare cancers (e.g. osteosarcoma, medulloblastoma) that together make only a small contribution to the total cancer burden."

and that it

"excludes [...] common cancers for which incidence differs substantially between populations and over time."

So it sounds like the generalization hinted at in the abstract shows a bigger misunderstanding of statistics than any in the press release. Would be nice if the paper was not paywalled, so we could actually read it.

[FrojoS]

I put the full paper in pastebin: http://pastebin.com/GH1ZY8Zx

Didnt read it, so not sure if its sufficiently understandable without the figures. Prob not.

[smtddr]

What's HN's stance on posting a paywalled article to pastebin like this? If I were to guess, I'd think this to be frowned upon.

[Dylan16807]

Why would you think that?

[matznerd]

I frown upon it because I prefer the PDF :P

[LispShmisp]

Here you go: http://www.uvm.edu/~cdanfort/csc-reading-group/tomasetti-sci...

[rjurney]

You're right. You might say "most cancers are caused by bad luck," and across the set of types of cancers... that might be the case. But if you were to say, "Most cases of cancer are caused by behavioral or environmental factors" you'd be saying something entirely different.

[hyperion2010]

Yeah, we you look at total cancer burden and the associated epidemiology you can explain something like 90% of cancers from environmental sources (which includes things like obesity). Don't have a reference on me at the moment so feel free to disagree.

[epistasis]

A 2005 Lancet paper [1] says that ~35% of cancer deaths can be attributable to a modifiable risk factor, and that's only risk factors likely to be causal, not known to be causal. If accurate, that would would support the "most cancer due to luck." However, this is the first that I've looked into it, and if it's higher than 50% I would be quite interested to see data supporting that.

[1] Abstract: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... PDF: http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(...