<story><title>IBM pitched Watson as a revolution in cancer care, but it’s nowhere close</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/05/watson-ibm-cancer/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>code4tee</author><text>IBM has some OK offerings but they&amp;#x27;ve really screwed themselves with all this hyped up marketing around Watson. They&amp;#x27;ve become somewhat of a joke within the real data science community and business executives are also increasingly becoming disillusioned when projects based on IBMs mystery black boxes fail to deliver.&lt;p&gt;The MD Anderson situation was a debacle of monumental proportions. Such claims on cancer care are quite unethical in my view given that it gave a lot of very sick people false hopes and diverted a lot of hospital attention and funding away from stuff that actually works.</text></comment>
<story><title>IBM pitched Watson as a revolution in cancer care, but it’s nowhere close</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/05/watson-ibm-cancer/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yread</author><text>&amp;gt; On a recent morning, the results for a 73-year-old lung cancer patient were underwhelming: Watson recommended a chemotherapy regimen the oncologists had already flagged.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “It’s fine,” Dr. Sujal Shah, a medical oncologist, said of Watson’s treatment suggestion while discussing the case with colleagues.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; He said later that the background information Watson provided, including medical journal articles, was helpful, giving him more confidence that using a specific chemotherapy was a sound idea. But the system did not directly help him make that decision, nor did it tell him anything he didn’t already know.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know, that doesn&amp;#x27;t sound bad at all. Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s just a case of overhyping. But if a computer can do recommend the same treatment as an expensive oncologist with years of training that&amp;#x27;s actually pretty good!&lt;p&gt;On the other hand it is quite baffling why doesn&amp;#x27;t FDA require a clinical trial or any independent review of its capabilities before allowing its use in clinic. It&amp;#x27;s a bit like Boeing certifying its own planes, I guess.</text></comment>