Re:Five Nurses who work on the same floor at hospital have b...
by klipt on Saturday April 05, 2025 @09:53PM
(#43598331)
Right but five people all getting brain cancer is certainly more suspicious than five people getting any cancer.
Re:Five Nurses who work on the same floor at hospital have b...
by card_zero on Saturday April 05, 2025 @11:13PM
(#43598682)
> with the same cause
That seems circular, like it's not a cancer cluster until we find out that it's a cancer cluster, or it's not a cancer cluster because we didn't determine a common cause, so don't worry too much about there maybe being a common cause that would make it count as a cancer cluster.
This underlines how stats are no substitute for reasoning about mechanisms.
Re:Five Nurses who work on the same floor at hospital have b...
by SubiculumCode on Saturday April 05, 2025 @10:29PM
(#43598473)
You know, if a bunch of nurses got their heads exposed to a radiation burst in an event, would they all get the same type of cancer? Probably not.
If (for example) twenty percent of the time 500 people were scanned, five at least had benign brain cancers, would this report be unusual or suspicious in itself?