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Comment by satvikpendem | Hacker News Reader

Using scientists being "stunned" should take the same amount of relevance as someone being "slammed" in article titles.

It's a direct quote from one of the scientists:

'"I was absolutely stunned when I first saw the results," Prof Chris Griffiths, a senior author on the study, at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC."'

The BBC should have put it in quotes in the headline; I kept the HN title faithful to the original article.

I agree. Though they did at least put it in quotes in the first sentence, which I hope doesn't indicate how far people are generally getting through an article before commenting on it on Hacker News.

I know, generally it is not a direct quote, hence "should."

Scientists are only allowed to be stunned when results exceed 5 sigma of deviation

Or when their papers are retracted for political reasons.

Yes, and I really don't care if they've got a direct quote from a scientist. Far too likely that word was coaxed out of the scientist by a reporter or PR hack. Or he thought he needed to use that word to get enough attention to keep his research funding. Or he was a relatively closed-minded scientist.

HN needs a 's/^scientists stunned by/Scientists notice/i' filter for Titles.

Smokers don't magically undo the damage they did to their lungs after they stop smoking. Stunned might be hyperbole, but it is at least a little bit surprising.

"Stunned" isn't really a scientific term. It's the sort of editorializing you should expect to come from people who aren't the scientists themselves. More than hyperbole, it is classic click bait.

Also, quitting smoking definitely eases a number of symptoms, especially if you're not at the point of chronic emphysema. The reduction of inflammation triggers alone after a bit of time is fairly significant. Less coughing, less mucus buildup, etc.

But this isn't that at all. "Stunned" is used here because it's the word one of the study's authors actually used.

'"I was absolutely stunned when I first saw the results," Prof Chris Griffiths, a senior author on the study, at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC.'

> “ Smokers don't magically undo the damage they did to their lungs after they stop smoking”

Except that they do undo the damage.

“ After 15 years, your chances of getting lung cancer are almost the same as someone who has never smoked.”

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/prevention/

4x the rate is "almost the same"???

https://www.verywellhealth.com/risk-of-lung-cancer-in-former...

The lifetime risk is approximately 1.3% for women and 1.8% for men. For regular smokers: 11.2% for women and 14.8% for men. So about 15 to 30 more likely to get lung cancer. Bringing that down to 4x is close to "almost the same".

Might be that I am not reading probabilities correctly, but how do 1.3% -> 11.2% and 1.8% -> 15% become "15 to 30 times more likely"? Sounds like less then ten times?

Good catch, wrote this on the go. The first stat is a study on Canadians, the second is from another source which is global.

No. But that only looks at heavy smokers and duration they stopped, so overselects for old age with higher cancer incidence.

This study looks more broadly, notably also at onset of smoking:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/27...

And this is the TL;DR:

“ Thus, those who quit smoking at ages 15 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, and 55 to 64 years avoided an estimated 100%, 89%, 78%, and 56% of the excess cancer mortality risk associated with continued smoking, respectively”

They absolutely do! Not all the way, but if you'd have smoked a pack a day for 15 years and then have given up for the last 15, there's absolutely no way you'd be saying this!

My Dad stopped smoking for 20 years and then died from long cancer.

Hey here is something for you to stun on:

https://old.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/1v73w9s/hydr...

To be fair, BBC is aimed at the normies, not the scientifically literate. (No hate on BBC!) Stunned probably gets more clicks than surprised.

Sounds like an announcement of the latest AI news from Wes Roth. I'm surprised the Professor wasn't "shocked"

I'm obviously supportive of less pollution etc etc but looking at the actual graph results I wouldn't describe them as 'stunning', the needle barely moved. But of course, they have to have something to make headlines after spending so many million on the study and who knows how many billion on ulez. I'm not one of these anti ulez people I think it's good. But you can imagine the pressure to spin tepid results into headlines.

The entities with a ton of money tied up in the ULEZ are, perhaps with a layer or two of indirection, are likely the same ones funding this research, or if not this research then the guy across the hall in the same lab.

I'd like to imagine the stunned scientist is a scientist from another field, they show some medical findings to a guy who looks at snail butts all day and he's the one "stunned" by the findings

The scientist who used the word "stunned" is one of the study's authors.

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