1521
Breast Cancer
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Not at all, in this case.
A false positive of even 50% can mean telling the patient "they are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer and should get screened every 6 months instead of every year for the next 5 years".
Keep in mind that women have about a 12% chance of getting breast cancer at some point in their lives. During the highest risk years its a 2 percent chamce per year, so a machine with a 50% false positive for a 5 year prediction would still only be telling like 15% of women to be screened more often.