July 26, 2012

Cancer deaths rates down (slightly)

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The Herald has a story that, I think, satisfies all the best-practice guidelines for scientific news.

They are reporting on new Ministry of Health cancer mortality statistics for 2009, and trends up to that year. In particular

  • The source of the information is described well
  • They quote both total deaths and rates per 100,000 population, and explain why the trends are different.
  • They ask experts for comment and context, and give reasonable explanations of what might be causing the trends

A couple of things I would add to the story:  first, the mortality rates per 100,000 population are also age-adjusted, so they take into account the aging population, and second, an important contributing factor to the reduction in the cancer mortality rate over time is the reduction in smoking.  Improvements in diagnosis and treatment also help, but they are not the whole story, especially for lung cancer.

If you want the actual numbers, they are here.

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »