The usual disclaimer: this is promising, but don’t count on great results.
If it works as advertised—if—it could be what #Theranos promised and so spectacularly failed to deliver. #Grail is using well-understood technology and (I think) large enough samples to make the claims for the #Galleri test believable, at least. And the #NHS (again, I think) doesn’t have the kind of incestuous relationships with financially interested parties that helped #Holmes et al. get away with such fraud for so long. So I’m inclined to trust their reporting.
With that said, the usual #statistician’s disclaimer applies: #multiple #testing is hard. So, for that matter, does the #medic’s and the #biologist’s, because there are multiple kinds of multiple testing going on here. The more you test, the more you will screw up.
I almost appended “it’s like a law of nature” to that last sentence above … but no, it is a law of nature. Unreasonable effectiveness of #mathematics something something.
#Cancer screening is important, and steady improvements in the field have already saved untold numbers of lives. I expect this will continue to be the case. So take this with cautious optimism. Pushing back the boundaries a little bit at a time, each small step representing another decade or year or month of life—it’s what we do, every day. I want to believe.
