Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxj!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!cmcl2!lanl!jlg From: jlg@lanl.ARPA Newsgroups: net.med Subject: Re: Re: Unconventional Cancer Therapy F Message-ID: <22999@lanl.ARPA> Date: Thu, 7-Mar-85 21:38:43 EST Article-I.D.: lanl.22999 Posted: Thu Mar 7 21:38:43 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 08:42:32 EST References: <11971@gatech.UUCP> <8000018@hp-sdd.UUCP> Sender: newsreader@lanl.ARPA Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 51 > I happened to glance at the April '85 issue of Science 85 just out, and > quote the following from their "Highlights" section: > > Vitamin C is ineffective as a treatment for cancer. So say > doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who found > that victims of bowel cancer given large doses of vitamin C had > no better survival rate than victims treated with a placebo. > The report contradicts the assertions of two-time Nobel Prize > winner Linus Pauling, a longstanding advocate of the vitamin's > powers to treat some diseases. > > Mmmrmmph! Don't you love the way they make it sound so final, so > resolved, so unambiguous? I think you (LPI) would be doing their > readers a favor to write a letter to the editor, pointing out some > of the experiments you've quoted here. Media reporting of scientific matters always tends to sound final, or at least authoritative. This is especially true of reports prepared for the lay public. Remember all the press about ozone and spray cans? Turns out that the current estimate of the average steady-state decrease of ozone concentration is about 3-5% !!! That's MUCH less than one standard deviation of the daily variation of ozone concentration. In short - little real effect. The problem is that the lay public is not able to correctly interpret the meaning of a carefully worded scientific result - it sounds to uncertain. I tend to agree with Richard Feynman - we live in a very unscientific society, but one which is increasingly oppressed by pseudo-scientific argument. Fortunately, there are enough people in scientific fields that can read an article such as the one above and still discern its real meaning: Doctors at the Mayo Clinic failed to find a statistically significant difference in mortality between two small groups of cancer patients under treatment that differed in the amount of Vitimin C prescribed. The wording of the article indicates (through the use of the word placebo) that the study was a properly done, double-blind test - just what you should expect from a place like the Mayo Clinic. To make this interpretation requires that you understand the degree to which journalists indulge in hyperbole, the present status of cancer research in general and Vitimin C treatment specifically, and the size of experimental samples that the Mayo Clinic is able to put into one study. Its too bad that you have to decode media reports of such things in this way, but there's always Science and Nature to turn to for the actual announcements of such studies. J. Giles