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Comment by piokoch | Hacker News Reader

Here we go again. If someone searches for a good example of journalist reporting scientific results in a very wrong why, here it is.

Not understanding difference between in vivo and in vitro study, not understanding that there are multiple and easy ways to kill cancer like hammer, fire, road roller, etc.

Sad to see another click-bait article since people get convinced that doctors and scientists are promising cure for cancer but are not able to deliver anything, big pharma secretly tries to stop progress and so on.

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I wish I could up-vote this 1000x. Scientific literacy is beyond lacking these days, and the number of people who even know what "in vitro" or "in vivo" actually means is even more staggering. My favorite are the people/groups who tout the toxicity of products like Roundup to skin tissue in an in vitro experiment, completely overlooking the fact that the surfactant used in Roundup to make glyphosate stick to a plant so it can be absorbed causes chemical burns to the skin if you pour it on and leave it on... which, in vitro, kills skin tissue. All of which says nothing of the toxic effects to human stomach enzymes of plants which have absobed glyphosate. But hey, it's a headline on which people will click...

Perhaps even more staggering is the illiteracy of people regarding the field of statistics. I have read that epidemiologists are constantly having to explain the statistics of their findings to MDs who know medicine but not statistics. If medical doctors are stumped by the language and rules of statistics I don't expect news editors or presenters to do any better with it.

On ‘in vitro’ and ‘in vivo’. Maybe we’d have more success communicating this difference if we didn’t expect the layperson to know jargon? Yes, it’s two words, but they’re pretty similar so confusion is inevitable.

I asked my girlfriend to sit on my lap. When she took a shit on my lap I wasn't mad though, since yes, it's two words, but they're pretty similar so confusion is inevitable.

This kind of satire is unnecessary and unhelpful.

It costs nothing to say "lab testing" instead of "in vitro". Literally the same number of syllables, zero loss of precision, and immediately understandable to a wider audience.

Testing in mice is considered lab testing though, so clearly something is getting lost in translation, no? All you really need to know to infer from context is "vivo" = "alive" and "vitro" = "glass".

But labtesting can be done in Vivo, some would say in Silico even, depending on your definition of lab.

In vitro is a consice term, useful to me in my profession.

Unrelated to the argument, but I can imagine Sean Connery having such problem.

I dont know why youre getting downvoted, the latin-rich terminology in medicine is pompous and unnecessary. if you want to learn anything about your own body, you better have a dictionary.

decompress a tension pneumothorax to prevent obstructive shock? depends on which site is cirucumstantially advantageous (midclavicular or midaxiallary), but generally involves palpating to locate the correct intercostal region. need a catheter of sufficient french.

if someone's chest is filling with air and crushing their organs, you have to find the correct space between ribs by touch. use a big needle. if the front of their chest is blocked, you can go in under the armpit.

give me break.

> I dont know why youre getting downvoted, the latin-rich terminology in medicine is pompous and unnecessary.

C'mon! This may seems true for english speakers and non-romance languages. But I as a non-english native speaker, can say exactly the same about CS terminology! It is just too pompous and unnecessary, as it will in almost any other non-germanic/anglic language.

As someone who speaks a latin-derived language, "in vivo" and "in vitro" are immediately easy to infer from context. There's nothing about latin/greek that is pompous: we use words like "dentist" and "plumber" and any english speaking person knows what they mean. Personally, I believe english is the lingua franca of the world precisely because it has a large number of appropriations and thus a very large and diverse vocabulary.

Rather than expecting specialists to water down their vocabulary to cater to the uninitiated, it seems more reasonable to expect that science journalists should instead learn said jargon and learn how to interpret studies and abstracts properly. I'd go a step further and even argue that a highly educated society ought to encourage and celebrate cross-discipline learning not just by media reporters but by every individual, rather than expect everyone to meet at a mediocre common denominator.

Isn't this just a matter of medicine having chosen Latin as the international language? By that same logic we should complain that programming is done in English as well.

Yes, you have to learn a new language, no you don't have to learn all of them (which would be the case if we did not standardize on languages for specific fields).

the problem does not seem to be that people confuse the terms, but rather that they don't understand that testing something inside a living being and in a sterile container differs.

At lest this part is better than most reports:

> Dr Duffy did not want to use words like breakthrough or cure, stressing this was just the beginning and much more research needed to be done.

The paper indicates that the test were done in vivo, in mice models. They also used a synthetic version of a particular compound (melittin), as an adjuvant with an existing cancer drug. They also determined how the compound affected those cells. (plasma membranes formed pores, and interferring with cancer-signalling pathways)

"The study also found when the venom's main component was combined with existing chemotherapy drugs, it was extremely efficient at reducing tumour growth in mice."

I don't think that criticism is warranted for this article. It seems quite careful to me. It says nothing about a therapy except that it's too early to talk about a therapy. It states facts and no promises are made. The only breathlessness here is that the local scientists are super excited.

Headline: "Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research study finds honeybee venom rapidly kills aggressive breast cancer cells"

"Key points:

- The research was published in the journal Nature Precision Oncology

- It found honeybee venom was effective in killing breast cancer cells

- Researchers say the discovery is exciting but there is a long way to go"

Last paragraph:

"Dr Duffy did not want to use words like breakthrough or cure, stressing this is just the beginning, and much more research needs to be done.

"There's a long way to go in terms of how we would deliver it in the body and, you know, looking at toxicities and maximum tolerated doses before it ever went further," she said."

If you substitute the words "honeybee venom" with "bleach", the key points you mentioned stay true.

My point is, this paper doesn't have a very useful finding.

If the article was about newly discovered action of bleach on cancer cells, and we didn't already believe that was a no-go for a therapy, that would also be an interesting article, yes.

Time will tell if this finding turns out to be useful.

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1217/

The author is a member of the 'I F* LOVE SCIENCE GROUP' on Facebook. What more could you want?</sarcasm>

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