* cures (or causes) cancer | Hacker News Reader

* cures (or causes) cancer

kill-or-cure.heroku.com

178 pointsacangiano58 comments

I made this - thanks for voting it to the top of HN!

In case anyone's still unclear, it is a tongue-in-cheek dig at the Daily Mail's reporting of cancer stories. It's most definitely not a medical resource. I could probably have done the same with almost any newspaper, but the Daily Mail is uniquely deserving of opprobrium.

You can get the code and a database export on GitHub if you're interested: http://github.com/threedaymonk/kill-or-cure

I wrote the whole thing one Sunday night and tweeted about it at midnight; by midday the next day, I had successfully crowdsourced the analysis of all the articles. If I'd known how successful it would be, I'd have written a better, more detailed crowdsourcing process.

Upvoted for a double-whammy of awesome: Not only have you given us the gift of github, but you just taught me the word "opprobrium". Domo arigatou!

I'm truly unamused by your lame thingy.

Sure, you can take a poke at this or that not entirely proven cancer association. But your "tongue-in-cheek" site definitely facilitates the devaluing of the many and subtle cancer associations that have been demonstrated - it is not a constructive contribution to the discussion on this subject. For example, while the case automobile pollution causing cancer might not be air, do you have proof that it doesn't cause cancer? Having "incorrect" as the alternative for each assertion on the Daily Mail is seriously problematic.

Either you believe what you wrote - in which case you're a total idiot - or your sarcasm is seriously lame; I really can't tell which.

It's amazing how many food sources listed in their raw form aren't themselves guilty, but the industrial manufacturing processes and additives used to enhance them are.

Edit: I can't help myself. Some examples:

Bacon causes cancer: "High doses of inorganic phosphate salts – which are used to enhance the texture and flavour of processed meats..." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1102368/Additives-...

Eggs cause cancer: "The chemicals, residue from drugs given to chickens..." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-50995/Cancer-chemica...

Rice causes cancer: "Cotton production relied heavily on arsenic pesticides. It left residues in the soils which are still there and is being picked up by the rice." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-444222/Rice-tainte...

Spices cause cancer: "...foreign producers are colouring spices to boost prices and profits." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-347287/Cancer-chec...

What really pisses me off in general is adding useless stuff to things that make said things worse. For example coloring agents in food, but the same goes for superfluous features in software.

"Anthropomorphic paper clip software assistants linked with cancer..."

They definitely raise stress levels, and raised stress levels are definitely linked to cancer (I should think).

Did they add the site's tagline after most of these HN comments were made? It clearly reads, "Help to make sense of the Daily Mail's ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it," which makes it pretty obvious that they're poking fun. Everyone here seems to be reacting as if this site is claiming to be a reputable source of information about cancer-causing materials.

EDIT: Oops... looks like acangiano beat me to it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1495362

We even both used the term "tagline," which is kind of interesting, since it could just easily have been called a "subtitle" or something.

> We even both used the term "tagline,"

We were clearly meant to be best friends, Mr. Cantor. :-P

So, wanna hang out later[1]?

1 - http://xkcd.com/165/

Sure, The Daily Mail, just like any other mainstream news source creates sensationalist headlines to shock you into reading. That doesn't make the studies cited any less accurate. Nor should it prevent us from having an on-topic conversation about something more in-depth.

The Daily Mail is more than just sensationalist. Not quite as bad as today's Daily Express headline though:

http://www.express.co.uk/ourpaper/view/2010-07-08

>That doesn't make the studies cited any less accurate.

No, but it does make it statistically more likely that they are inaccurate. It's known as 'study selection bias'.

Statistics should only be applied to fairly uniform and understandable phenomena.

Applying statistical likelihood in this instance is stretching the bounds of statistics considerably more than The Daily Mail stretched them.

No, applying statistical methods to this instance is unreasonable. Observing that selection bias skews the probabilities involved is perfectly reasonable, and indeed almost necessary to rational discussion.

Nope, I haven't changed anything. You can check the git commits if you don't believe me ;-)

"We've cured cancer so many times in rodents, if I were a mouse, I'd take up smoking unfiltered Marlboros while working at a nuclear waste disposal site in the Ukraine."

JunkDNA, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1020444

For those of you not familiar with the type of articles printed by the Daily Mail, here's Dan and Dan's Daily Mail Song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

(Scaremongering cancer headlines near the end here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI#t=1m51s )

Related: The Daily Mail Oncology Ontology Project http://thedailymailoncologicalontologyproject.wordpress.com/

And a continuation of it here: http://dailymailoncology.tumblr.com/

Yeah, this is a deliberate stab at the Daily Mail, not an actual sorting of factual information.

Uh ...

In the same way as the Daily Mail, the BS headlines is problematic regardless of the valid point available when you read the article.

A lot of comments here missing the point... The Daily Mail is a tabloid that is exploiting people's (evident even here on HN) love of hearing about cancer cures/causes regardless of evidence.

Looking at one of tcdent's links (bacon!) it seems pretty well balanced and plainly reported to me:

"However, experts urged caution over using the results of the trials on mice to predict the effect of phosphates on humans.

Professor Stephen Spiro, of the British Lung Foundation, said: 'The authors claim that in mice with lung cancer a diet high in phosphates increases lung cancer growth rates.

'While this may be a relevant observation, it has never been assessed in man. Further study would be required to ascertain any link in humans.'

Dr Kat Arney of Cancer Research UK added: 'Smoking is by far the main cause of lung cancer and quitting is the best way to reduce the risk of this disease.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1102368/Additives-... [link added by copy-paste]"

They stated the limitations of directly applying the result to humans, they interviewed 2 professionals in the field. Stirling. If you're right this must be an aberration?!

Most Daily Mail readers are incapable of reading past the headline, so stuffing balance near the end of the article usually elicits the desired effect.

We have an acronym for this sort of thing: FUD.

Indeed. The whole paper is pretty much devoted to scaring the shit out of readers, spouting bizarre stories devoid of any real basis of fact.

eg "Immigrants linked to terrorism cancer causing pedophiles"

This site is quite hilarious. Now can we get a iPhone app that lets me take a picture of an object and tell me my probability of getting cancer according to the daily mail index by using this object?

It would be really cool to have this parsed to determine which data came from controlled studies and then create something like this with the results: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplem...

edit: The above would have to assume the data from the site is reliable, which we can't assume based on the source being Daily Mail.

Wow, I love this. Time to look into beta glucans! :)

Vitamin D is also really important for immune health. Especially for knowledge workers, who don't normally get enough sun. Recent studies have found that Vitamin D actually activates your T-cells, so without adequate levels, your immune system will act like a depressed dog during a home-invasion and just lay down.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/vitamin-d-its-... http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=another-r...

Scraping real scientific data from journal articles/headlines published in PubMed would be a lot more interesting and noteworthy.

Not to mention "causing cancer" is a bit of a misnomer. Cancer typically arises when genetic mutations cause a cell to exhibit uncontrolled and sustained division. Our cells experience thousands of mutations a day, most of which are fixed. Some of these inanimate objects may upon being metabolized or coming into contact with a cell, cause mutations. With more mutations, you are at a higher risk for one to go unrepaired and lead to something other than cell death. Colloquially, I understand we refer to certain things as causing cancer but I think the idea of grouping everything into discrete boxes isn't really something worth pursuing in this case.

If you read the about page http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/about, you will see that the source is the Daily Mail and the explanation seems rather tongue-in-cheek.

This makes me want a version for actual peer-reviewed papers.

The Daily Mail causes cancer.

If you burn it and inhale the smoke, probably!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yzbxwxWUz0

Please note they used Daily Mail as the source. Daily mail is notorious for made up or inaccurate stories.

Right... That's the point.

I didn't even realize it was an attempt at a serious story. "Age causes cancer" sounded like a spoof. Not to mention saying alcohol causes AND cures cancer.

Age is a huge factor in cancer. By a certain age, virtually every male has prostate cancer.

I have long wanted to see someone attempt to live their life following every piece of advice on how to increase your longevity that appears in trashy current affairs tv shows, bad newspapers etc. Would make a great blog.

Only briefly - until their head exploded.

> Reheated spaghetti bolognese 'prevents cancer'

Now I have a legitimate reason for making way too much spaghetti bolognese, well beyond it being my favorite meal of course.

Cigarettes seem to be conspicuously absent from the list.

Then again, I guess the link's been well established already.

Hmm, on second thought--I didn't realize these were all daily mail links.

I wonder if immigrants cause cancer.

Deleted comment

I believe that's the point of this site. The tagline is: "Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.". The media alarmism and sensationalism are damaging to humanity's fight against cancer.

My bet is that someday we will realize that viri cause cancer.

People deliberately mis-spelling "viruses" causes high blood pressure, which causes cancer.

Some cancers _are_ caused by viruses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervical_cancer

Partially true information can be just as misleading as completely false information.

For example, I looked up "Cannabis"; only 1 entry saying it causes cancer. But I know from other articles on other sites that there are properties that fight cancer. (I don't know if it "prevents" cancer though).

Needs more data?

They're only using Daily Mail articles

I know

Why cite "other studies on other sources" and claim it "needs more data" if you know the point is present data from one source? Not to present an objective look at cancer studies, but to present a filtered look at Daily Mail articles on cancer studies?

As an exercise or function in doing something with data, sure, do as you please.

But if this were to have practical application, and the potential to solve problems via the crowd, why not improve it and give it better data?

Your version sounds like a great project! Post a link when it's ready!

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