Prostate cancer junk science

This crap news story from Reuters demonstrates everything that’s wrong with “science” and journalism today:

The findings stem from 2,686 men with prostate cancer whose physical activity was assessed repeatedly both before and after diagnosis. The subjects were followed between 1986 and 2008.

Regular physical activity -- both vigorous and non-vigorous -- was associated with a lower risk of death from any cause, the researchers found, whereas regular vigorous activity was associated with a lower, but nonsignificant, risk of death due to prostate cancer.

At least the article was honest enough to use the words “was associated with” rather than “caused.” Nevertheless, the rest of the article clearly trumpets that you need to exercise to lower your risk of death:

We recommend that men with prostate cancer do some type of physical activity for their overall health, even if it is a small amount, such as 15 minutes of activity per day of walking, jogging, biking, or mild gardening. Vigorous activity may be especially beneficial for prostate cancer, as well as overall health.

It should be incredibly obvious that people in bad health would exercise less because they are less able to. There is also the usual confounding factors problem in all medical studies; all activities which are generally considered to be “healthy” by SWPLs correlate with each other and with factors like better education, higher IQ, higher income, and access to better medical care.

If you can’t even trust “scientists” and journalists to report about something like this in a true scientific manner, how can you trust them on global warming? Obviously you can’t. You should distrust any “science” that agrees with what’s politically correct.

Comments

[OneSTDV]

HBD made my very skeptical of the scientific establishment.

[Peter A]

Medicine is not science. It uses elements of science but there's a big difference between medicine and true hard sciences like physics, chemistry and biology. In reality medicine is a soft science like economics - lots of statistical analysis, lots of correlations, very little actual proof.

[joe morrison]

"There is also the usual confounding factors problem in all medical studies; all activities which are generally considered to be “healthy” by SWPLs correlate with each other and with factors like better education, higher IQ, higher income, and access to better medical care."

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_13913952?source=rss
Surprise: the richest zip codes are the healthiest.

[Jon Claerbout]

"You should distrust any “science” that agrees with what’s politically correct."

Hey, that's quotable!

[sabril]

Also, I would guess the kind of person who is more likely to exercise regularly is probably also the kind of person who is more likely to go to the doctor and get checked regularly and enjoy the benefits of early detection.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to test the relationship between exercise and cancer. Probably they should do studies with chimpanzees. My prediction is that chimpanzees who get regular exercise have lower risks of dying from cancer.

[JewishAtheist]

LOL, you're such a cocky idiot. If only you could teach those moronic scientists about confounding variables! I'm sure they've never, ever heard of them. And the idea that correlation does not equal causation will just blow their minds!

Blame reporters all you want -- they deserve it. But the scientists just don't have the flaws you attribute to them.

From the abstract:

"To reduce the potential influence of disease on activity level, we excluded from the analysis men with diagnosed metastases at diagnosis, and we only utilized activity information from four to six years before death. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for risk factors for PCa mortality. We calculated hazard ratios for total mortality and PCa specific
mortality."

http://www.aacr.org/Uploads/DocumentRepository/2009_conf/CPR/cpr09_abstracts_poster_a.pdf

And the conclusion does not offer the mental leap you imply it does:

"Conclusions: In a cohort of men with PCa, physical activity was associated with a lower risk of overall mortality. Regular vigorous activity may reduce mortality from prostate cancer."

[Andrew E.]

Side note: What Peter A says about economics above is not strictly true. Mainstream economics certainly uses a lot of statistical analysis and correlation studies but real economics, that is Austrian economics, does not. Real economics is still different from the hard sciences in that the source of causality in economics is known a priori, human action, the study of which is praxeology (I'm taking from Mises and Rothbard here). Given the a priori axioms available to economists, such as humans take purposeful actions meant to satisfy some chosen end, they don't need econometric models, nor economic data for that matter, to explain economic phenomena (which would be impossible anyway since economic phenomena is complex and non-repeatable). All economic theory is derived from a priori axioms and thus proofs of economic law are possible. Physicists and chemists do not have the source of causation available to them a priori and so they must construct models and experiments and record empirical data and observations in order to develop theories and laws.

As to the post, I think the democratization of education has a lot to do with the horrid quality of academic work that's put forward. Too many people going to college, too much grade inflation that inevitably results, too much diluting of standards.

[Justin M.]

wait, so saying that exercise is good for you is PC? Therefore, it is totally up in the air whether or not exercise is good for you?

[Kevin K]

Something else the article doesn't mention is the survival rate (meaning you will likely die of something else) of prostate cancer is extremely high. If caught in slow growing stage and treated aggressively the survival rate is 95%+.

Most people who get prostate cancer are elderly men. I bet some moderately exercise does help them in general, even if it doesn't with cancer.

[meter]

Please send out a blast email when you're done with the climate conspiracies kthx.

[JohnM]

Somehow I doubt you'd be as critical of the study's methodology if their conclusions were more in line with your assumptions (wishes?).

It's pretty simple really, exersice helps the body process the stress hormones that show up in daily life. More stress typically leads to less immune effectiveness, which can then lead to tumor growth.

Actually, an RCT test shows that moderate aerobic exersice helps treat depression. And how is promoting exersice PC? Here's fox news's take
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145487,00.html

[HS: Whether someone feels depressed is based on how the patient FEELS, which means the placebo effect comes into play. Ignoring the placebo effect is another area where a lot of medical research falls down.

I'm agnostic on whether exercise is good or bad, I'll believe whatever real science shows to be true, but note that sedentary office workers have much longer life expectancies than people who do physical labor. I just want to know the real truth, and not what's politically correct.]

[dearieme]

"All medical research is rubbish" is a better approximation to the truth than almost all medical research.

[Qing Buqiang Zu]

RE: Reuters Crap

More of it here:

http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/

FYI, they are full of shit and not that smart or able (just like Jewish Atheist).

[N.Bakalar]

I haven't read the study (and there is nothing in your comments that suggests that you have either), but if the authors didn't control for obvious things like other diseases, general health, income, education, and many other things that you don't even mention, then the study would never have been published. To believe that no one thought of controlling for these things, you would have to believe that the authors of the study, the referees who read it, and the editors of the journal that printed it are all complete morons. Is there really a reason to believe that all these people are stupid? No,there is not. Maybe a quick glance at the study would help.

[HS: They tend to make a token attempt at these things, because if they did it completely there'd be no conclusion.

When I carefully examined a "peer reviewed" study published in a journal, I saw that it was complete bunk:

http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/11/breastfeeding-d.html

The study I debunked asserted the politically correct belief that breast milk is better than formula.

In this case, i can't find the study online, and even I did the studies NEVER include the data used in the study.]

[JohnM]

I've never heard of medical research where researchers simply ignored the potential for a placebo effect or at least a control group. in the aforementioned study, there were three groups. there were differences in subjective feelings among the groups, providing evidence it was more than just a placebo effect.

[HS: Controlling for the placebo effect is necessary to get a drug approved by the FDA. However, to get some study published in a journal which concludes something like “exercise helps depression,” the placebo effect is routinely ignored.]

[rob]

"There is also the usual confounding factors problem in all medical studies; all activities which are generally considered to be “healthy” by SWPLs correlate with each other and with factors like better education, higher IQ, higher income, and access to better medical care."

HS, for swipples to be healthy because they do all these things thought to be healthy, some of those things must in fact improve health. Not being fat, eating fruits and vegetables, and moderate exercise are plausible.

[Kevin K]

Does this count as politically correct research? I hope not, because I want to believe :

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/coffee-and-beer-cut-risk-of-aggressive-prostate-cancer-1968172.html