this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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It’s not, though and that’s the issue.
False positives are at least as dangerous as false negatives and AI solutions like this have massive problems with over diagnosing.
EDIT: It’s really fun to have a bunch of home-bound tech workers try to talk down to me about the science behind and practice of medicine.
Absolutely 100% wrong.
In pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, a false positive means a follow-up scan. A false negative means death, the 5-year survival is near zero once it's caught late, but exceeds 80% when caught early.
In the study, the radiologists' lower false positive rate is achieved by missing 78% of cancers. That's not a safer trade-off, it's just a different way to fail. "Overdiagnosis" also requires a disease that might not have harmed the patient, PDA doesn't have a harmless form. Every missed case is a lost life while every false positive is an extra doctor's appointment.
This system detects twice as many cancers and was flagging them, on average, 675 days (nearly 2 years!) before clinical detection.
You selected a single pathology which supports your otherwise specious and false argument.
Be better.
If I'm wrong, then feel free to support your position with evidence or an argument showing that my statement was specious.
I linked the, peer-reviewed, paper which contains the data that supports my statements on the topic.
You've made two conclusory statements and immediately resorted to insulting comments when challenged.
There is not a single aggressive pancreatic cancer where a false negative is more dangerous than a false positive.
Percutaneous biopsy has a mortality rate of approximately 0.2% even relatively non-malignant pancreatic cancers (say Solid pseudopapillary neoplasm) have 10-year survival rates in adults of around 88% and that number is from cases which received surgical intervention and chemotherapy something that would not happen with a false negative.
So even in the worst case, the false negative multiple times more deadly. A false positives' most likely outcome is pancreatitis from the biopsy procedure.
They selected the pathology that’s the topic of the post to support their on-topic argument. Be better, indeed.