<story><title>Physicists offer new theory on cancer</title><url>https://asunews.asu.edu/20130712_pauldavies_cancer_research</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tokenadult</author><text>Ah, yes, a university press release, with its well known role in the Science News Cycle.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.phdcomics.com&amp;#x2F;comics.php?f=1174&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wish these researchers well. Cancer has been tough to treat,&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-havent-we-cured-cancer-yet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sciencebasedmedicine.org&amp;#x2F;why-havent-we-cured-canc...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;in large part because &amp;quot;cancer&amp;quot; is not really just one disease, but a general term for a variety of related diseases with many different kinds of outcomes and treatment trade-offs.&lt;p&gt;If someone can find a very general commonality to most cancers, with a treatment for that commonality that is safe and effective (and not too expensive) for human beings around the world, that person will of course win a Nobel Prize in medicine. Here on Hacker News, over the 1704 days that I have been here, I have seen many kind submissions of breathless claims of breakthroughs in cancer research. We all desire that cancer breakthroughs happen. Follow-up, so far, has not suggested that any such cancer breakthrough actually has happened. I wish the researchers well, and I hope to hear later about placebo-controlled multicenter clinical trials that show that this approach is safe and effective for human medicine.</text></comment>
<story><title>Physicists offer new theory on cancer</title><url>https://asunews.asu.edu/20130712_pauldavies_cancer_research</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jforman</author><text>&amp;quot;Davies and Lineweaver are currently testing this prediction by comparing gene expression data from cancer biopsies with phylogenetic trees going back 1.6 billion years, with the help of Luis Cisneros, a postdoctoral researcher with ASU&amp;#x27;s Beyond Center.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Press releases for untested scientific conjectures (further nerd-rage inducing by calling it a &amp;quot;theory&amp;quot; in official communication) raises a red flag for me: it suggests that the investigators aren&amp;#x27;t fully skeptical of whether their conjecture actually represents the real world, and increases the probability that they&amp;#x27;ll introduce bias in their investigation.&lt;p&gt;The article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/2013/jul/01/exposing-cancers-deep-evolutionary-roots&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;physicsworld.com&amp;#x2F;cws&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;indepth&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;jul&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;expo...&lt;/a&gt;) is 100% hand-waving imo:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Could it be, we wonder, that cancer’s predilection for a hypoxic environment reflects the prevailing conditions on Earth at the time when multicellularity first evolved, before the second great oxygenation event?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Wondering,&amp;quot; alas, is not science!  We need a model, a hypothesis, and a well-controlled experiment to actually discern truth.</text></comment>