Re: Attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer, 1934-1965

Our plain-English summary of Re: Attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer, 1934-1965, by M.A. Schneiderman (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1993).

The study

• Author: M.A. Schneiderman
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1993;23(3):509-10
• Type of article: Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a short commentary, not a research study, responding to Philip Enterline's 1991 review of changing opinions on asbestos and lung cancer from 1934 to 1965. It reports no new asbestos data. The author had no better explanation than Enterline for why Americans took 20 years longer than the Germans to accept a relationship between asbestos exposure and lung cancer, but offered several thoughts. The author recalled a Canadian scientist saying in the 1970s that "asbestos is to Canada as tobacco is to the United States," and noted that in Enterline's tables a major late (1964) disbeliever was the American College of Chest Physicians. The author also described an experiment run by Marvin Zelen, unrelated to asbestos, in which nearly 100 people followed results from a clinical trial. About 90% would have stopped before a statistical stopping rule did, yet all reached the same decision. The author suggested that the hurdles epidemiologists must clear for "proof" may be too high, and framed the choice as between quick, sometimes wrong decisions and slower, hopefully less often wrong ones.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Commentary responding to a published literature review (Enterline 1991); no original data
• Who was studied: No study population. The commentary discusses Enterline's 1991 exploration of the literature on asbestos and lung cancer.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure and lung cancer, as the topic of the history discussed; no exposure was measured
• Main results:
  • The author said they had no better explanation than Enterline's for why Americans took 20 years longer than the Germans to accept the asbestos and lung cancer relationship.
  • The author recalled a 1970s remark by a Canadian scientist concerned for that country's asbestos industry.
  • The author noted that in both of Enterline's tables, a major late (1964) disbeliever was the American College of Chest Physicians.
  • In an experiment on intuition versus statistical significance run by Marvin Zelen (not about asbestos), with an audience of nearly 100 people as the author recalled, about 90% of participants would have stopped before the statistical boundary was crossed.
  • In that experiment, all participants reached the same decision the sequential stopping rule would have given.
• The authors' conclusion: The author suggested that the hurdles epidemiologists must clear for "proof" may be too high. The author described the choice as between quick and sometimes wrong decisions and slower, hopefully less often wrong ones.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer.

Related studies

• Re: Attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer, 1934-1965 — J.M. Harrington (1993)
• Re: Historical reasons for attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer, 1934-1965 — M. Corn, J.K. Corn (1993)
• Changing attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer 1934-1965 — P.E. Enterline (1991)
• Re: Attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer, 1937-1965 — D.J. Kilpatrick, M. Kottek (1994)
• Re: "Changing attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer 1934-1965" — J. Keane (1992)
• How are we going to change our attitudes and opinions regarding asbestos and cancer in the next 20 years? — J. Bignon (1992)

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