A new pancreatic cancer test?

pakeha said:
Just seen at the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19291258

ETA:
I removed a silly question.:o
What interests me is knowing the opinions about this news- it sounds almost too good to be true.
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No one is reporting this other than the BBC, apparently. The odds that it is breathless puff piece journalism by reporters who are not themselves expert enough to be critical of the details are good.
 
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...and-engineering-fair/winners.html?cid=cim:ggl

Seems to be real. Unfortunately the BBC article appears to be the worst kind of factually inaccurate nonsense that the media so loves to pump out. For example:
BBC said:
168 times faster and more than 1,000 times less expensive
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Actual award said:
28 times faster, 28 times less expensive
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They've just made up some random numbers that have nothing to do with anything, then spouted a load of bollocks about Google as if the search engine used to find scientific papers has any relevance at all.
 
Faster and less expensive are not the critcal factors.

SOONER is.
 
Thanks for the impressions!
I did a quick google myself and found:
http://www.pancan.org/section_resea..._science_fair_pancreatic_cancer_diagnosis.php
...Even if Jack’s diagnostic tool were able to catch every pancreatic tumor in its early stages, the current relative 5-year-survival for Stage I pancreatic cancer (when the tumor is confined to the pancreas) is 21.9%. Having a new test that detects pancreatic cancer early has an upper limit of improving survival rates to this level. Anything higher would require advances in our knowledge of the precursors to pancreatic cancer and/or advances in the treatment of the disease as well.
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So yes, BBC not up to par.
And yes, kudos to Jack Andraka.
 
casebro said:
Faster and less expensive are not the critcal factors.

SOONER is.
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The Intel site also says that this new test is over 100 times more sensitive, which would presumably be of some help in detecting it sooner.
 
pakeha said:
Thanks for the impressions!
I did a quick google myself and found:
http://www.pancan.org/section_resea..._science_fair_pancreatic_cancer_diagnosis.php


So yes, BBC not up to par.
And yes, kudos to Jack Andraka.
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The BBC is not the only news media who sucks at reporting health relayed news. In 2008 a study that looked into 500 health related American news stories found that:
...between 62%–77% of stories failed to adequately address costs, harms, benefits, the quality of the evidence, and the existence of other options when covering health care products and procedures
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So if a health related news media article sounds to good to be true, it probably is. I like to read the original research paper, that inspired the news media report, but that is of course not possible in this case.
 
Rules of Science News

1. Never trust science news from a regular news outlet (I.E. BBC, CBC, CNN, etc etc.)
2. New Scientist and Scientific America are usually pretty good
3. If you can understand the scientific journals, go right to source!
 
Cuddles said:
The Intel site also says that this new test is over 100 times more sensitive, which would presumably be of some help in detecting it sooner.
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There needs to be a balance between sensitivity and specificity.

I have a very sensitive test for all kinds of cancer here. It's a card that says "Positive".
 
edd said:
There needs to be a balance between sensitivity and specificity.

I have a very sensitive test for all kinds of cancer here. It's a card that says "Positive".
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As the article (Intel, not the BBC one) says, both old and new tests are for a particular chemical. I have no idea how specific that is as an indicator of pancreatic cancer, but since both tests look for the same thing that doesn't matter for comparing the two. This test is, apparently, much better at finding the thing it's looking for. Whether they're looking for the right thing in the first place is a different matter entirely.
 
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