http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/the-new-york-times-on-false-positives-and-false-negatives/ "Marge, I agree with you - in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory." -- Homer Simpson Wed, 22 May 2013 19:28:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/the-new-york-times-on-false-positives-and-false-negatives/#comment-5795 Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:23:54 +0000 http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/?p=2546#comment-5795 Argh! I mailed them about the error two days ago, but they only implemented a partial correction! My suggested correction was “So, while only about one person in 5,000 would get a false positive test, about one person of every 12 carriers of the virus would get a false negative”. It’s unfortunate that they are clueless enough that even after someone points their attention directly to it, they still can’t see the mistake.

]]> http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/the-new-york-times-on-false-positives-and-false-negatives/#comment-5770 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:30:43 +0000 http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/?p=2546#comment-5770 They have posted a correction.

]]> http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/the-new-york-times-on-false-positives-and-false-negatives/#comment-5738 Wed, 04 Jul 2012 23:00:45 +0000 http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/?p=2546#comment-5738 It’s almost impossible to know what the true numbers should be (instead of 5000 and 12) because the population that chooses to take the test will almost certainly have a different HIV prevalence than the overall population.

]]> http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/the-new-york-times-on-false-positives-and-false-negatives/#comment-5714 Wed, 04 Jul 2012 04:54:17 +0000 http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/?p=2546#comment-5714 The journalists do not even bother looking up wikipedia.

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