Here's a small quiz regarding the false positives mentioned in the article.
If 3 in 1000 people in the general population are HIV positive, and a HIV test has a 1% false positive rate, (assuming no false negatives for simplicity) how likely is it, that if you run routine tests on a random group of people, for an individual to be healty despite the test coming out positive?
Despite the fact that false positives only occur 1% of the time, the answer is about 70% that they are healthy. This question has actually been put in front of practicing physicians, an overwhelming amount could not answer this question correctly, many were off by a magnitude.
Worth keeping that in mind when your doctor uncriticially tries to prescribe you something for a relatively rare disease because a measurement was positive.
> _Worth keeping that in mind when your doctor uncriticially tries to prescribe you something for a relatively rare disease because a measurement was positive._
yes and yet this is slightly overgeneralizing
what you have to keep in mind specifically is that these two things, prevalence in to he population and false positives (and negatives!) do _exist_ and that you should inform yourself about them and factor that into your decision making
a PCR COVID test for example is something you don't argue with. and the quick tests on the other hand came in widely different qualities.
If 3 in 1000 people in the general population are HIV positive, and a HIV test has a 1% false positive rate, (assuming no false negatives for simplicity) how likely is it, that if you run routine tests on a random group of people, for an individual to be healty despite the test coming out positive?
Despite the fact that false positives only occur 1% of the time, the answer is about 70% that they are healthy. This question has actually been put in front of practicing physicians, an overwhelming amount could not answer this question correctly, many were off by a magnitude.
Worth keeping that in mind when your doctor uncriticially tries to prescribe you something for a relatively rare disease because a measurement was positive.