Woo may have killed Steve Jobs

October 21, 2011 • 7:28 am

Many of us know that Steve Jobs delayed an operation for his pancreatic cancer—an unusually treatable form of that cancer that might have been cured by surgery—in favor of trying “alternative” therapy.  Today’s New York Times reports the details, gotten from a new and authorized biography of Jobs written by Walter Isaacson. The Times reports:

His early decision to put off surgery and rely instead on fruit juices, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments — some of which he found on the Internet — infuriated and distressed his family, friends and physicians, the book says. From the time of his first diagnosis in October 2003, until he received surgery in July 2004, he kept his condition largely private — secret from Appleemployees, executives and shareholders, who were misled.

. . . Mr. Jobs put off surgery for nine months, a fact first reported in 2008 in Fortune magazine.

Friends and family, including his sister, Mona Simpson, urged Mr. Jobs to have surgery and chemotherapy, Mr. Isaacson writes. But Mr. Jobs delayed the medical treatment. His friend and mentor, Andrew Grove, the former head of Intel, who had overcome prostate cancer, told Mr. Jobs that diets and acupuncture were not a cure for his cancer. “I told him he was crazy,” he said.

Art Levinson, a member of Apple’s board and chairman of Genentech, recalled that he pleaded with Mr. Jobs and was frustrated that he could not persuade him to have surgery.

His wife, Laurene Powell, recalled those days, after the cancer diagnosis. “The big thing was that he really was not ready to open his body,” she said. “It’s hard to push someone to do that.” She did try, however, Mr. Isaacson writes. “The body exists to serve the spirit,” she argued.

It’s hard to see how someone so science-oriented, so tech-y, could do something so manifestly dumb.  And he may well have paid for it with his life.  It’s a great pity.

The Times piece gives other details of Jobs’s life from Isaacson’s biography, which hasn’t yet been published.

102 thoughts on “Woo may have killed Steve Jobs”

    1. Usually such daftness involves lurve.

      Much worse when it involves health. A friend of mine – a really nice bloke – has done something similar, also someone with a science background. He did go all woo a few years ago (remote viewing etc, ‘we cannot know everything’, you get the idea) & I had no idea that he had any form of cancer – involved lymph nodes I think – until December 2010 when I last saw him & he said he was clear. I have serious doubts but he is never easy to contact so I do not know how he is now. One problem is false positives of course. Some people end up having treatment for something they may never have had.

  5. I think Orac has a good take on it over at
    http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/10/did_steve_jobs_flirtation_with_alternative_medicine.php

    Sounds like it probably didn’t make a gigantic difference. I worry about jumping on this too hard given the evidence is a bit shaky.

    Also, I don’t know where you got the idea the Jobs was some techno-science guy. He was more of a designer than anything (not an engineer). He’s always been into wishy-washy stuff. That’s not necessarily a criticism but the fact he tried alternative medicine doesn’t surprise me at all.

  7. There’s a remarkable amount of apparent Jobs-worship out there that really gives people odd impressions of the man.

    He was a salesman. He wasn’t a scientist. He wasn’t even an engineer. That was Wozniak and, later, Apple’s massive teams of talented employees.

    Jobs’ ability to cut through Americans’ intransigent tech-phobia and get normal people actually excited about consumer electronics was massively more important than most of the things fanboys think he did but it’s not surprising that someone with that much personal charisma might be a little self-suggestible.

    1. This. Jobs was always a businessman at heart, and found ways of selling Woz’s toys, while Woz was mostly just having fun toying around.

      People have an idea that he was some romantic creative type who happened to get caught up in the world of business and technology. The reality was quite different. In fact, I think his new agey hippiness helped create that impression.

      He always railed against The Man (who at first was IBM, and then Microsoft), but in the end he played that part quite well.

      1. Jobs’s strong focus was user experience (UX).

        His UX-first approach was very evident when he returned to Apple and killed projects that were technically very clever but just didn’t let users do, easily, what they actually wanted to do.

        /@

          1. Well, yes! Superior UX ⇒ desirable products!

            UX is about the aesthetics of the product as well as its functionality and ease of use.

            /@

          3. From one of my recent technology reports: “Pabini Gabriel-Petit at UXmatters notes that key factors contributing to the quality of users’ experience are learnability, usability, usefulness (or utility) and aesthetic appeal. Other authors add such things as identification, stimulation and value.”

            /@

        2. And it’s important to remember that a lot of the early UX that got associated with Macs were actually developed at Xerox PARC. It’s to Jobs’ credit that he recognized good ideas when he saw them, but he didn’t create that paradigm.

          Apple products are popular because they’re shiny and make people feel good about themselves. They have an aesthetic sensibility that a lot of people find pleasing. Put an Apple system in a beige box and the sales would plummet.

          1. A lot of truth in that beige box comment.

            I’ve not been overly impressed by Apple products. But then, I’m a techie sort of guy and I’ve lost a lot of important computer data over a long career due to HW and SW failures. The early Macs were clearly a huge improvement over command-line and I was an instant convert.

            But since Windows 95, not so much.

            We have many Apple and PC products in my house and the HW reliability has been significantly superior on the Dell and Toshiba products than the Apple products.

          2. I think you’ve been unlucky, then. I’ve had exactly the opposite experience with Toshiba and IBM/Lenovo products. So, who’s right? We need more than anecdotal evidence.

            From a broad industry stand point, provided by the largest IT research & advisory firm (Gartner), the relative reliability of Macs and Windows PCs from multiple vendors just doesn’t crop up as an issue.

            /@

            PS. UX is subjective, so many preferences between Macs and PCs does come down to personal tastes. I use both daily, and, while my ThinkPad certainly does some things better than my Mac, Mac wins overall. YMMV.

          3. Oh! I see what the problem is. It appears that you don’t have any GNU PCs.

            I too would like to put in a “the real brain was” vote for Wozniak. I’ve always thought Wozniak was the better person as well.

            Like Gates, Jobs was a marketeer and marketing is too much like jesus crackers for me to get exited about successful people in that field.

          4. Well, thanks for proving my point!

            Yes, Jobs magpied different ideas that contributed towards superior UX. And, per the comments I quoted above, “shiny” is very much part of UX.

            /@

      1. Yes, it’s so easy to find that Jerry is surprisingly shy of posting it on this bl—, um, website.

        It’s not as if putting it here would make it significantly easier for the cranks and spammers to find it…

        /@

          1. Thank you! Why didn’t I think of that before? It was on the second page of google…Anyways, it is not that easy to find on this site…You can get a contact on the about page but it clearly says MEDIA INQUIRIES ONLY….And your emails will be going to penguingroup.com!

    1. From the link:

      In fact, a growing body of scientific evidence points to the conclusion that optimism may be hardwired by evolution into the human brain.

      To which I would respond, “duh”. As the only creatures (that we know of) able to contemplate our own mortality, we’d better damn well have something hardwired into our brains, whether you want to call it optimism, or maybe just denial. I’d be interested to hear more about that book when you’ve finished it.

  10. Surgery and chemo are invasive and I can understand the fear of them. Sometimes fear leads to irrational decisions.

    I still have my wisdom teeth (at age 40) because I am averse to the surgery. Pretty pathetic, I know, especially compared to what Jobs needed.

    1. I always avoid surgery if possible (for instance using PT and exercise instead of surgery — at least for as long as possible — instead of orthopedic surgery.)

      However, in Jobs’s case it was pretty clear-cut: A well-established surgical procedure was the only effective (and quite effective) treatment for his condition.

  11. It’s hard to state with certainty that woo shortened his life. He survived 8 years after the initial diagnosis which is probably not too unusual for that type of pancreatic cancer (it is one of the small percentage of pancreatic tumors that behave in an indolent rather than aggressive manner.)
    The one new thing I learned about Jobs from the storys about Walter Isaacson’s book was that Steve Jobs’ biological father was Syrian.
    The bits about Jobs turning into a rather ruthless capitalist with little feelings for workers rights or conditions I could have guessed but the small details about his family were new.

  12. If you do not “trust” your “inner voice” (some would call it “gut instinct”) you may take the wrong path. I “listened” took the surgery and refused (clinical trials etc) and for me it worked.

    Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye! (Old Scottish saying) – What’s meant to happen will happen.

    It’s my sincere hope that none reading this are faced with, or will be faced with, having to make such a decision. But if you ever are,

    “check gut” first”

    I’ve a feeling that the 5% who survive my type of cancer did this.

    In an earlier post I spoke of Steve Jobs and “connecting dots” Once we learn how to listen, we can hear what people are “not saying” which is just as valuable as to what they are saying.
    I have a story pertaining to this topic but will not bore you with it unless you ask me to.
    It could helpif you have to “make a decision” now or at a later date.

    1. What’s meant to happen will happen.

      This is wronger than wrong, and incredibly ignorant. Obeying this would make people shun all drugs and procedures.

      The rest of your comment is nearly as bad.

    2. Afraid I have to agree with NewEnglandBob. Incredibly bad advice you’ve got there. The “gut” is notorious for steering people wrong. Much better to play “the numbers”, which requires a lot more work, data, and thought. And more work (by a host of others).

      1. Any time I listen to my gut, I end up eating fried chicken and donuts instead of salad and grilled fish.

        Listening to my gut just makes me fat.

    3. “I have a story pertaining to this topic but will not bore you with it unless you ask me to.”

      Please don’t.

    4. Incredibly unsupportive replies. “Your human experience is totally irrelevant, just go with the numbers and whatever drugs and procedures they want to load you up with.” Not that there’s any conflict of interest there or anything.

      Audra, congratulations on your survival. Long may you wave.

      1. I understand your instinct to be nice, Marshall, but why don’t you go back and read some of her previous commentary, where we were fairly nice, and see what your level of tolerance for woo-soaked dreck is. Whether she is a nice person or not doesn’t enter into it.

      2. We should be more validating of whatever Audra says? OK

        Audra, go ahead and do whatever your vague intuitions tell you to do, while the rest of us seek treatments based on evidence and reasoned advice from competent practitioners. Maybe next time you’ll be just as lucky. Or maybe not. Whatever will be will be.

        There, supportive enough?

  14. I was diagnosed with kidney cancer 20 years ago. Surgery was deemed needed immediately. I looked at the X-rays, CT scans, and ultrasounds. They just did not fit the images in the medical books. The Stanford experts seemed too confident in themselves.

    I cancelled the surgery but took a year long recovery cruise in my boat. Five more cruises, and 20 years and the “cancer” has not grown.

    I think that there are many false positives in the medical industry. They do not keep score on the number of un-necessary surgeries, or messed up surgeries. After all, an infection is not treated by the oncology surgeron. The worse the procedure goes the more money is made by the medical business. A false positive can cost the victum in insurance premiums.

    Steve Jobs was inclined toward metaphysical stuff. I am inclined toward facts. I look at the raw data and ask the “experts” then make my own decision. It is very hard to get straight answers from our medical system. Try asking for the results of a lab test. They are required to provide it to you but they are reluctant.

    1. I think I know what you’re talking about.

      Here (USA, Colorado), merely getting diagnosed with a simple urinary tract infection can be a trial. Similar experience in the UK, actually – with sensitivities not done, wrong antibiotics prescribed. Long story short, dealing with the same problem in Chiapas Mexico (southern Mexico highlands, across from Guatemala – some of the poorest places in the western hemisphere) was a piece of cake. About $10 later, had complete lab results with about 10-12 different sensitivities across the street from the doc (visit about $10). Got the right antibiotics (again, right across the street – everything in ready walking distance from each other) the first time as a result. A couple hours out of one day for the entire thing.

    3. Glad it worked out for you. Wouldn’t there have been other corroborating evidence besides just images for suspected kidney cancer? I don’t know what the medical science was up to 20 years ago with respect to kidneys, but something abnormal would be predicted for blood and urine.

      1. Blood and urine chemistry normal. Absolutely sympton free of any health issue. The “cancer” was detected in an ultrasound that was just verifying some fat in the liver tissues. I take warfarin to reduce the risk of phleabitis due to antiphospholipid antibody. It took advanced imaging to detect it and that is the only way it is detectable today.

    4. I have a similar attitude. I listen to the doctors, research on the web and make my own decision. I have a lot more time to do the necessary research than they do, and a lot more invested in the outcome. Of course in some cases they won’t do what you want anyway, but that’s a long story and I don’t want to bore you.

  15. The 5 year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is less than 10 percent. Jobs lived with the disease for more than 7 years, so he beat the survival rate odds. There are reports that his cancersaws one of the more treatable kinds but how many times have we heard stories about the surgical removal of cancers that later came back with vengeance. He was relatively young and did not want to have his body butchered so he took a chance on lifestyle changes as opposed to surgery. Those dietary changes never cured him but we will never know if he had done the surgery 9 months earlier if that would have yielded a cure either. The standard treatments available for cancer involve major surgical operations and/or poisoning the body. Some medical professionals when faced with these options opt to be put down so I understand the choice Jobs made.

    1. he really was not ready to open his body

      did not want to have his body butchered

      These word choices say ‘woo’ to me.

      1. Easy for you to say, but I wonder how you would react to being told by a doc we want to remove your A,B,C and D followed by a few rounds of chemotherapy. It is human nature to say there has to be a better way when faced with this unpleasant choice and the inherent uncertainty of a cancer diagnosis. I am not saying I would have made the same choice as Steve, I’m just saying I understand. Hopefully one day cancer treatments will get better so that people will no longer have to suffer through treatments that sound like something from the 19th century.

      2. Well, the second one, maybe.

        But the first? No.

        Take it from a surgeon who has counseled major cancer surgery many times.

        This is an extremely common reaction.

        And it is not uncommon for people to, fully informed, and fully rationally, choose a potentially shorter life expectancy over the morbidity and risk associated with a big, invasive surgery, with no hint of ‘woo’ involved at all.

    2. The 5 year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is less than 10 percent

      there is a lot of misinformation here.

      Jobs didn’t have that kind of pancreatic cancer, but the removable neuroendocrine tumor kind (much rarer at only 5% of cases).

      The survival rate from that with treatment is very high; you just have to remove the tumor.

      1. I should add:

        remove the tumor… early.

        assuming they caught it early enough, there is little chance of that type of cancer recurring after tumor removal.

        IOW, removal of tumor = cured.

          1. A spicy bit of information is the 95% post operative survival. That is 1 in 20 death in the operating room. That sucks.

          1. What I wrote is true – for all types of pancreatic cancer the 5 year survival rate is in the 10 percent range.

            just to be clear, you mean WITHOUT ANY TREATMENT, right?

            because otherwise, that’s just not accurate at all.

            If the reports are true that Jobs had a neuroendocrine tumor the five year survival rate is much higher at 42 percent.

            one, it is true, which you could readily find out if you even bothered to look, and two, I cited the primary literature on the subject, RIGHT IN MY RESPONSE TO YOU, and the survival rates of that kind of cancer, with surgery are higher than 80%.

            read the damn paper.

          2. I am not going to get into a pointless tit for tat over this. The link I provided shows a range of survival rates based on the stage the cancer was diagnosed at and the overall 5 year survival rate is clearly stated there. Maybe you should be doing a bit of reading yourself.

          3. you’re an idiot.

            the 5 year survival rate of neuroendocrine cancers is NOT 10%.

            which, because it isn’t, makes your entire original post useless, and nothing more than misinformation.

            you sir, utterly fail.

          4. …and in the immortal words of cousin Vinny, “Go fuck yourself.” I’m done talking to you. Fuckin moron,

          7. Gentlemen Gentlemen Please!!
            “The Problem is not the way I act its the way I react”

            Your discourse or whatever you choose to call it will not save one cancer victim tonight so its not worth arguing.

            My “gut instinct”statement was obviously misconstrued so I will explain it this way,

            The hardest journey to take is from The Head to the Heart.

            After being diagnosed and after a failed biopsy
            attempt I had a decision to make. I have several doctor friends, two of them being surgeons, so obviously I asked for their opinions.

            Had they told me what to do and I had died how would they have felt?

            Ultimately the decision was mine and mine alone I could listen to the voices in my head or the feeling in my heart. I chose the latter and that’s what I described as “gut feeling” perhaps a bad description for which I apologize.

            The quote about “what is for you” was perhaps a hint of my own fatalism. Used in the wrong place at the wrong time, I hear you, and again apologize.

            Perception was discussed here today. If we were to ask young people what Steve Jobs was famous for, I’m sure most would reply that he was “the inventor of the iphone and ipad . We have a different perception, why? because we have been around longer and have more knowledge of technology.

            If you have read this far I have something to tell you “God does not give life” and “God does not take life away” that knowledge is coming from a Believer, not an Atheist, Agnostic, Naturalist, or any other “ist” you can think of.
            Whatever you perceive me to be is probably a wrong perception.

            If you are interested in rational discourse let me know.

  16. Cancer killed Steve Jobs.

    Cancer most likely would have killed Steve Jobs if he had undergone surgery on day 1. Some cancers are a bitch.

    Friend of mine had a brain tumor. Did everything “right” … had surgery, which was successful, had treatments which were successful, went to every follow-up appointment and did absolutely everything the medical establishment told him to do.

    He did that successfully until the day he died of a brain tumor.

    Yeah, some cancers are way more amenable to treatment than others. Breast, prostate, some lymphomas, leukemia, etc. But some just aren’t.

    I, for one, if in Jobs’ place would be looking very very carefully at the risk-benefit profile of the treatments. Why should one suffer for months on end through a series of surgeries, painful and debilitating treatments, and all the rest, just to prolong your life for a few months?

    Some good pain meds, a place of comfort, and enough extra drugs to get the job done when I’m ready to go. That’s my plan, should I ever be faced with such a decision.

    1. Cancer most likely would have killed Steve Jobs if he had undergone surgery on day 1. Some cancers are a bitch.

      again, no.

      Jobs did not have aggressive pancreatic cancer.

      he had a much rarer neuroendocrine tumor that was readily treatable.

      if he had undergone surgery early enough, he would have been flat out CURED.

      1. …and yet, he had the surgery, which was “successful”.

        Seems to me you’re engaging in magical thinking here.

        Cancer killed Steve Jobs. Cancer that returned after he had successful surgery.

        I see absolutely no evidence to suggest otherwise.

          1. and it’s not fucking magical thinking.

            I cited the relevant research on the topic just upthread from you.

          3. The question which we do not know, and can not know unless we have access to Jobs’ full medical record, is whether or not day one (ie his day of diagnosis) was early enough.

  17. As much as I admire Steve Jobs for the influence he had on the technology industry he was never really “tech-y” as you say.

    Like Bill Gates, Steve’s success stemmed from his drive and vision. Both of them were lucky enough to have visions that were actually viable and to find partners who were “tech-y” and who made their vision work.

    Both of them also had their share of flops.

  18. Already pre-orderd the book.

    Like you said: A great pity. Someone as innovative and effective as Jobs was. A pity.

  19. In case it hasn’t been mentioned yet, someone in a related thread suggested one of the reasons Jobs may have decided to delay the surgery, is that it was a rather debilitating procedure in and of itself (Whipple has a long recovery time), and he might have been involved in some current negotiations he wanted to complete first.

    …and figured the woo was the only other alternative to a more debilitating procedure.

    I have no idea if that’s the case or not, but it seemed a plausible alternative to the idea that he chose the woo first because he thought it would work better.

    I could imagine myself weighing the risks of waiting on the surgery, vs. finishing up, say, a PhD thesis that I only needed a few months more to complete.

    …and then just taking the woo in the meantime since “it doesn’t hurt”.

    1. …but then, there’s what his wife said

      His wife, Laurene Powell, recalled those days, after the cancer diagnosis. “The big thing was that he really was not ready to open his body,” she said.

      *shrug*

      2. What his wife said is not necessarily counter to that earlier speculation, at least in broad strokes.

        He may well have decided not to proceed with surgery primarily because of concern over the morbidity and recovery associated with the big procedure – work-related responsibilities aren’t the only motivating factor that could play into such a decision. And decided to pursue the woo only after he had already made the decision not to proceed with surgery.

        ie, He did not forgo surgery because he thought some woo was better, but chose to try to woo only after choosing against surgery for other motivations, and figured he might as well try something.

  20. It sounds like he clearly changed his mind, but I don’t think that means that he just didn’t get that surgery was needed. Sometimes it is better to hold to your principles even if that increases the threat of death. Perpetuating life for life’s sake is an ignoble goal.

  22. Each one of us lives and dies according to his own lights.
    The force of character that carried Steve Jobs through his downfall and adversities, against conventional wisdom, to his vindication at the pinnacle of the computer industry, became his nemesis when it turned into stubborn denial of medical evidence.

    More than 2500 years ago, such patterns were evident to the ancient Greeks:
    the hero encounters fatal misfortune through his own tragic error.
    Their word for the ritual, cautionary play based on this structure is still with us.
    It is the only one I think fit to describe the illness and death of Steve Jobs:

    T R A G E D Y

  23. Acupuncture can have no effect at all on cancer. Any acupuncturist who says otherwise is a flat out liar. Ask them how in hell it can help. By balancing your energy, they will say. Jobs’ energy needed balancing. It was so way out of balance that it caused him to have cancer. So he had some needles stuck in him for nine months until he came to his senses and had the surgery which for his type of cancer can save lives – if you detect the tumor early enough.

    He may have had admirable qualities but he was supremely foolish in turning to acupuncture as a treatment for cancer.

    1. The energy imbalance in cancer that needs fixing is the imbalance in metabolic energy (from food and air) resulting for the cancer stealing that energy from the rest of the body that needs it.

      You fix that by removing the tumor. (Whether by surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy)

  24. Without actually knowing what is in Jobs’ private medical records, we can never know for sure, but if there was actually clinical evidence that his cancer had progressed at the time of his actual, delayed surgery (ie that it was indeed now too late), it seems likely to me that they would not have proceeded with the surgery. For if they had already known that they had missed the window for potential cure, such an extensive and morbid procedure would no longer provide sufficient survival benefit to justify going ahead (though in the US system a sufficiently wealthy and personally forceful patient might be able to convince/find some surgeon to role the dice and try anyways).

    But it seems most likely that, clinically, there was not much change in Jobs’ condition between the time he first refused surgery, and the time he finally decided to proceed. This is not to say that occult progression might not have occurred, but it would be progression that would not have been detectable at the time.

    Which is why we really cannot justifiably say that there is any evidence to suggest that the delay actually altered Jobs’ outcome in any significant way.

  25. The anecdotal stories I have read are touching but don’t mean shit. No matter how bad you think modern medicine is, statistically it is your best bet for survival. Other treatments such as the Ornish program can’t do any harm unless they take the place of traditional medicine. Complementary/Alternative/Integrated Medicine including naturopathic may help cancer patients deal with their disease. Nothing wrong with using a little placebo effect.

  26. It’s always a gamble, but the surgery odds must be better by a long way. He was quite a guy. Looking forward to reading the bio.

  27. Point taken Jobs was more of a designer than an engineer. But even in science related fields, most professionals are scientifically illiterate. In medicine many practitioners go through the detailed aspects of providing clinical care but could not critique a scientific paper nor have a coherent scientific ethos. Modern medicine exists because of science, but that does not mean those proficient in giving slices of therapeutic care understand the philosophical umbrella under which their discipline is made possible.
    I was no slouch at college physics, chem and bio. But one can excel at these narrow fields and still be an idiot. I’m not embarrassed to say my world view was more profoundly influenced by popular science – Dawkins, Gould, Sagan, Asimov…

    1. I was no slouch at college physics, chem and bio. But one can excel at these narrow fields and still be an idiot.

      Hear, hear.

      My son attended the local “Math & Science Center” in high school. The computer teacher there is an evangelical Christian . . .

      In conference, once, with the curriculum honcho, I mentioned that I felt there was a lack of evolution in the biology class. He told me, “well, that’s a sore subject around here.”

      Excuse me? At the math and science center?!

    2. And a lot of doctors still do not understand weight of evidence and the power of statistical analysis.

      1. a lot of doctors still do not understand weight of evidence and the power of statistical analysis

        Dominic, this may be the mildest understatement you ever posted.

        I used to live for near a decade in a house where the other ten or so parties were medical people. I was the stats and computing guy (despite my originally classical background, stats and computing is what I mostly do these days). So I ended up crunching their numbers for their dissertations and various other papers. That later got me into revising other medical stats. Cut: When I stopped hyperventilating, I met up with one of the Faculty’s stats honchos, a biggish name in his own right. Why did his students come to me, a total outsider, and why were their standards so shaky? Basically, he told me, he couldn’t reach them. Unless they were accompanied by a competent statistician for a considerable length of time, they skipped the course or skimmed through it, learning the buzzwords by rote, and that was that. Medical research types would at some point delve into stats again, forcibly; clinicians, not so much (a bit of caricature here, but comparing papers, I found this picture largely correct).
        Part of the problem being that so many younger medics don’t even realise they haven’t a working grasp of statical fundamentals. They excel at picking up the jargon: a p-value here, a chi-square there, but unable to tell whether the test they’re using is relevant to the distribution at hand, or what. I recently asked a bunch of bright young students (at my bedside, so I had a vested interested in them providing a correct answer) to state, in plain numbers, how many false negatives or false positives the alpha and beta values they had just chosen for their experiment stood for. What error ratio, given their number of samples, were they ready do accept? Blank stare. Despite them just having completed a course on hypothesis testing.

      2. Thus the new effort to employ “science-based medicine.” About time, no?

        Occam–*shudder.*

  29. From Walter Isaacson’s 60 Minutes interview: Steve Jobs’s tentative atheism influenced the design of every Apple product.

    [Jobs] said “sometimes I believe in God and sometimes I don’t … but then I think life is just an on/off switch: click, and you’re gone. … That’s why I don’t like putting on/off switches on Apple products.”

    It goes without saying that Apple is for atheists.

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