Tag: false positives

Mercola versus flu vaccines and COVID-19

There is no COVID-19 “casedemic.” The pandemic is real and deadly.

Antivaccine activists and pandemic minimizers Del Bigtree and Joe Mercola are promoting the myth of the "casedemic" that claims that the massive increase in COVID-19 cases being reported is an artifact of increased PCR testing and false positives due to too sensitive a threshold to the test. As they have done for vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases many times before, they are vastly...

/ November 23, 2020

Corrigendum. The Week in Review for 04/09/2017

The NECSS is coming. Acupuncturists mimic chiropractic. Flu vaccine prevents death. In the UK they care more for cats than people. The problem is my middle burner, not too many burgers. And more.

/ April 9, 2017

Corrigendum. The Week in Review for 03/19/2017

What happened this week? Measles returns to kill. Stem cell injections blind. Lousy acupuncture studies. Fire hot. Skinny jeans are not a reason to see a chiropractor. Lesbian tendencies do not respond to homeopathy. And more.

/ March 19, 2017

Acupuncture and Migraine – New JAMA Study

Yet another poorly designed acupuncture study with dubious results is being presented as if it were compelling evidence.

/ February 22, 2017

The American Cancer Society’s new mammography guidelines: Déjà vu all over again

One of the things that feels the weirdest about having done the same job, having been in the same specialty, for a longer and longer time is that you frequently feel, as the late, great Yogi Berra would have put it, déjà vu all over again. This is particularly true in science and medicine, where the same issues come up again and...

/ October 21, 2015

Why False Positive Results Are So Common In Medicine

Have you ever been surprised and confused by what seem to be conflicting results from scientific research? Have you ever secretly wondered if the medical profession is comprised of neurotic individuals who change their mind more frequently than you change your clothes? Well, I can understand why you’d feel that way because the public is constantly barraged with mixed health messages. But why...

/ July 23, 2009

Screening Tests – Cumulative Incidence of False Positives

It’s easy to think of medical tests as black and white. If the test is positive, you have the disease; if it’s negative, you don’t. Even good clinicians sometimes fall into that trap. Based on the pre-test probability of the disease, a positive test result only increases the probability by a variable amount. An example: if the probability that a patient has...

/ June 30, 2009