I'm also curious if there's an increase of diagnosis because they work in a medical setting. Either they recognize the symptoms, or casual conversation with a doctor.
These are benign tumors that were asymptomatic, and they only found them because people in the unit complained about some other health concern, and screenings began
The American Cancer Society says that in order to meet the definition of a cancer cluster, occurrences must be the same type, in the same area, with the same cause, and affecting a number of people that's "greater than expected" when a baseline for occurrences is established.
“Nearly 4 out of 10 people in the United States will develop cancer during their lifetimes," the society said on its cancer clusters webpage. "So, it’s not uncommon for several people in a relatively small area to develop cancer around the same time."
The unstated numbers that matter here are many, how many people were thoroughly investigated here, was it the entire staff of the hospital (as many as a thousand, perhaps)? When X many people are thoroughly scanned how common is it for five people to have benign cancers that aren't doing anything, aren't growing, are just there?
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?
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.
> when there are billions of people in the world it is expected that some where several get cancer at the same time.
That would be the answer if we asked whether such a coincidence ever happens in the world. In this specific case, the question is, 'what are the most likely causes?'
To calculate a p-value (roughly spoken), you need to start with a single hypothesis. Then you gather data and the p-value gives you the probability that your data occurs while your hypothesis is false. When you start with a finite set of multiple hypotheses, you need to take that in to account when calculating your p-value.
When you start with data and come up with a hypothesis afterwards, you would have to find the whole potential space of all hypotheses. So, for example, how many hospitals are there? Do you only consider US? Do you only consider nurses or other employees as well? What about only four nurses would that have made it to the news? What about other forms of cancer? What about time? Do you consider the time period of the last 50 years? As you think about what might have made the news, the set of hypotheses grows bigger and bigger and as it approaches infinity, the p-value for any data would approach one. Because when you have a very large set of unlikely hypotheses, the probability that your data accidentally supports one of them is quite large.
P values are common in science for those that don’t know. It measures what the odds are something you observe would happen in just a random sample. Or something like that.
Yes. Many references for this topic, Google "evidence of pathogenic cause cancer". This one looks like a good read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S295019462... "Role of infectious agents in cancer pathogenesis and therapy" for a dozen examples. There's so many more in reality.
It's not. It's just that their immunity is very tolerant to other members of their specie so having a cancer of the face in a specie that frequently bites each other in the face is transmissible. Afaik there is no pathogen involved.
The a smart way to look at it. But for full generality, I consider cancer particles emitted from tumors such as during surgery as pathogenic vectors of cancer whether an underlying cause involves microbial hosted or just the cancer cells themselves cancer definitely has a bit of a panspermia thing going on.
That’s why I never wanna spend time in cancer wards. It is most definitely contagious across multiple vectors in unique ways.
Randomness can be clumpy, but clumpiness does not have to be random. Clumpiness is typically causal. Your experiment won't tell you what you need to know.
"repeated number 2 out of 5 on a dice" vs. "repeated brain tumour out of infinite other things that can happen in dynamic system you don't even know all the parts" rly?
run an RNG that doesn't quantize to an integer and see how many repeats you get then:)
it also sneaks in a hideen assumption "cancer is random" in a way that tries to avoid a "citation needed". I hate those sorts of comments, worse than propaganda (at least that one obvious)
I’m surprised the hospital said they were confident it was safe. I wonder what gave them confidence? I’m struggling to think of what data I could have on hand that would convince me it was really safe. Also, to folks saying that randomness is clumpy… did you read the article? I think a bunch of nurses that notice they are all getting sick (and then FIVE of them getting brain tumors) should be taken quite seriously. I’d start with the assumption that there IS an environmental problem and then figure out what it is.
They said there weren't any environmental factors. However, we don't know that much about brain cancers and the only real environmental factor would be radiation and some meds (like the mini pill). Checking the water supply is fine, I guess, but it takes years for the cancers to form (usually). Who knows if whatever they would look for would still be there. I think there's little chance of finding a new environmental factor. I think it's likely some unknown factors exist. I just don't think it's likely they'll find one this time.
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/september-2018/c...