Testing for a rare disease with an imperfect test can be harmful: a 95%-accurate test for a condition with one-in-a-thousand prevalence (e.g., lupus) yields only about a 2% chance of actually having the disease given a positive result, so when no treatment exists, such testing mainly creates false alarm and is a disastrous thing to do.
causalpending
Speaker
Russ RobertsEvidence Quote
“the frequency of the disease is one in a thousand which is I think in the case of lupus the example that was given so even though the test is 95% accurate seems like it's very accurate getting a positive result the test means your odds of having the disease is 2% ... testing for it's really a bad thing it all it does is is convince a bunch of people that their ... risk when in fact they're not”
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:17:23 AM
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