When 50 Percent Is Not the Same as a Coin Toss: Study Examines Decisions Made Based on Statistics

Extract

When a diner orders escargot at a French restaurant and is shocked to discover a plate covered with snails, she can always send them back. But when chemotherapy is on the menu, she can only choose once. And many times, patients do not understand what is really on the menu, according to a study that shows that simple variations in how doctors present survival data can lead to large differences in the perceived benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. This misperception of risk can change whether a patient chooses to undergo chemotherapy, and that should be a cause for alarm, the authors concluded.

“The bottom line is that a very simple statistical manipulation can have a rather dramatic impact on the decisions that people make,” said Jamie Studts, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at the University of Louisville and coauthor of the study, which appeared in the December 1, 2003, issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.