Re:Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads
by fallingknife on Thursday February 13, 2025 @05:33PM
(#43042316)
You are assuming that those false positive rates are fixed, but they aren't. The "positive" criteria are done by an analysis exactly as sophisticated as a human scanning a list of numbers. The process is a joke and it needs to be improved by more data and better analysis, not this nonsensical "don't test people because they might be positive" argument.
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Re:Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads
by mlyle on Thursday February 13, 2025 @05:40PM
(#43042386)
No, I'm assuming there's a tradeoff between sensitivity (spotting cancers) and specificity (having your positive results actually be cancer).
ANOVA to pick variables and then reasonably selecting thresholds is a fine process that avoids overfit.
The big problem is, biology is messy and measuring lots of people to find correct thresholds is really expensive and time consuming. It's not really a technological problem, though technology has helped a little.