May 24, 2015

Briefly

  • Flickr has an automatic photo-tagging algorithm. Users don’t like it, because tagging is their business. And also because it “labelled images of black people with tags such as “ape” and “animal” as well as tagging pictures of concentration camps with “sport” or “jungle gym.”
  • A basic medical-reporting rule is that you don’t say “cure” in the headline if it isn’t a cure. The recent study of mutations in prostate cancer, reported in the Herald (from the Telegraph), is headlined “Breakthrough offers hope for prostate cancer cure“. About two-thirds of the tumours “had mutations in a molecule that interacts with the male hormone androgen which can already be targeted by current drugs.”  That’s true, but it’s not only “can already be targeted”, but also “is already targeted as standard practice“. Many of other commonly-found mutations are in genes like in BRCA1 and BRCA2, where we don’t have anything like curative treatment. In the medium term, yes, this could be very useful, but the headline is over the top.
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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 »