Causation is Hard
What does it mean when an increase in cancer coincides with an increase in the ability to detect it? Nothing really, because correlation isn’t necessarily causation? Or something, because the new diagnostic technique has biased the data? Specifically, are doctors finding more cases of melanoma nowadays because they’re looking harder or are they finding more cases of melanoma because something else, maybe increased UV radiation, is causing more people to get it? Those are the questions raised by this New York Times article. Something similar happened with prostate cancer and something similar will likely happen in the future once methods of detecting cancers like mesothelioma and leukemia very early in the disease process are developed.
