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Ask HN: Why did you vote on "Cancer not a disease of modern world"?

14 points by fnl ↗ HN
Apart from programmer I am also a scientist on cancer; when I saw this subject I (in full: "Briefing: Cancer is not a disease of the modern world") had to read the corresponding link, especially as it was voted to the top (2nd place) of HN. Although it is already explained in the article why the title's statement is wrong (read the statistics), it gained the 2nd place in HN. Why, dear HN co-followers, did you vote this utterly unscientific, not rational, misleading, and clearly wrong statement to the top of HN? (Because cancer IS a disease of the modern world; We grow about double as old as a few hundred years ago, and the number of mummies we have collected so far are definitely not enough in the exceptional assumption the title of the post does). So, everybody who voted this article up: why did you do so? Furthermore, this "mummy & cancer" issue is even known [to me, at least] to be an old hoax brought up already several times (and there you will simply have to trust me, as I will not even start to waste my time by trying to bring up references for that).

19 comments

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cperciva
cancer IS a disease of the modern world

That depends on how you define "world". As used in the headline, the distinction is drawn between the modern world and the modern people who live within it. In that context, the headline is entirely correct.

fnl
The world is the place we live in populated by the people we live with. If you want to say that cancer would have occurred equally had people lived longer in the ancient times although, then you are right. However, that would be not a novel insight at all. The point that would be interesting to announce is that cancer only occurs in the modern world and has not happened before, despite lifespans.
thaumaturgy
"of the modern world" is ambiguous. You assume that the phrase is primarily referencing modern lifespans; others assume the phrase is primarily referencing environment.

There clearly is some interest in whether or not there are recent environmental factors -- i.e., factors other than lifespan -- which are contributing to cancer rates.

To your more general question, HN is full of programmers, programmers tend to think of themselves as "system" people, and since (in their mind) every discipline of science is just an attempt to understand some system, programmers tend to think that they can comment intelligently on those systems without any prior expertise in them.

sthatipamala
It is only fitting then that you make a gross generalization about how all programmers make gross generalizations about "systems".
chairface
Furthermore, the original article was clearly primarily referencing environment.

"A quote from David put out by the University of Manchester saying "There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle" caused particular consternation."

from http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19591-briefing-cancer-...

I believe the OP has just misunderstood what the second article was objecting to.

fnl
Well, that is a good answer, too. I did not read it that way but then seeing it that way (based on pollution) actually is quite agreeable - although not proven. (We simply do not conclusively know the impact of cancer rate increase because of pollution except in special cases where the pollution is above "normal" - at least I am not aware of any such publication.) Also, what cancer-related organizations quote as bad - "There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle" is exactly that - a very misleading phrasing. So, yes, you can interpret this article two ways: either "pro" Schütz or "pro" David/Zimmerman. I understood the article as advocating the latter, however, to my relief most people seemed to anyways see it as it should be understood. So, maybe my question was not clear in the first place - or, more like it, I think, you guys have quite elegantly resolved my concerns :)
fnl
Yes, right. I even think there is quite plausible space to argue that cancer IS increasing because of environmental pollution. However, that is still quite hard to prove.

Concerning your last quote, I think it is not only related to programmers; It is a common state most prevalent in a human species we call "politicians" :)

sorbus
Because the article is interesting, even if the title is misleading. We vote on the content of articles, not just the titles, as you seem to believe (note that you ask "why ... did you vote this ... statement to the top of HN").
fnl
Well, I think the content is misleading, too. Sorry if that was not clear.
sorbus
Fair enough; I will jokingly call your post misleading too, then, before continuing onwards.

How is it misleading? Going through, it seems to (sort of) address the one issue you mentioned ("cancer IS a disease of the modern world; We grow about double as old as a few hundred years ago"):

"Almost all the mummies and skeletons were of people who died before the age of 50. "Ageing is one of the major causes of cancer," says Schüz. ... "In men today, 90 per cent of cancers occur after 50," he says. "So if you examined the bodies of 1000 modern men who died before 50, you wouldn't find many cancers either." "

fnl
Well, I think this post (not just the headline on HN, the real one, naturally) is misleading because on an uniformed read it could make you assume that cancer is something that has occurred because of the modern lifestyle - and for that there is no direct evidence.

If you look at the rate of the death toll directly related to cancer, it dramatically increases after about 40 and goes high after 50 (as said, except for hereditary cancer, which always has been "around"), as the story correctly quotes. So if that what you thought is all they wanted to say - that everything is as we thought it was all the time (i.e., lifespan increase has increased cancer incidents) - then even more the question of why vote on it?

So my question is at the very least justified in a sense of "why is this new", but much more because the way I understood the way they put things, it seemed to advocate my former take on it, which is dangerously misleading.

Zev
FWIW, I've upvoted a story or two in the past, simply because I hoped that other people would comment on it and I was genuinely curious as to what the community thought about the story/post. It could very well be the same case here.

And please do keep in mind that an upvote on HN doesn't necessarily mean that the person behind the vote agreed with the story (let alone the title).

fnl
Thank you, Zev, that makes me far less preoccupied (honestly)! My voting strategy is simply on what I think is important (from my individual standpoint, naturally), to know - hopefully, for others, too. However, you take of "testing the quality" of a story as a voting strategy seems actually quite genuinely interesting.
kes
I am the same way. I often find the HN discussion more useful than the article in itself. I think there are many people that feel the similarly.
ggchappell
You're certainly not alone here. In a couple of cases in the not-too-distant past, I've upvoted HN posts that I thought were on the crappy side, but I was very interested to see the discussion in the HN comments. I don't do this too often, but now & then it seems like a worthwhile thing to do.
petercooper
I didn't vote it up. But FWIW, I open a lot of HN links in tabs and read them throughout the day so I usually just vote up ones I'm pretty confident will be interesting from the title alone. This example had a catchy title for sure and perhaps a lot of people were caught by it.
hetman
The title was obviously just an attention grabber implying a little about the content, it was the title of the original article after all.

I upvoted because the article weighed in a little on the debate initiated by the other article recently posted. Both made some sloppy claims but also enough interesting points to warrant attention in my opinion.

Edit: I shouls also note most of the readers of HN aren't cancer researchers. They may not spend as much time thinking about this as you, which is why I think instead of this thread, your contribution in the comments would have been more valuable.

evgen
There are several reasons that others have pointed out as justifications, I will simply note that the "weekend HN" is a different beast than the Monday-Friday HN. The weekend HN gets lots of political BS and lower-quality stories popped onto the front-page by smaller group of people who up-vote similar stories.