The DOI matches its Crossref record.
The Will Rogers Phenomenon: Stage Migration and New Diagnostic Techniques as a Source of Misleading Statistics for Survival in Cancer
Abstract
We found that a cohort of patients with lung cancer first treated in 1977 had higher six-month survival rates for the total group and for subgroups in each of the three main TNM stages (tumor, nodes, and metastases) than a cohort treated between 1953 and 1964 at the same institutions. The more recent cohort, however, had undergone many new diagnostic imaging procedures. According to the "old" diagnostic data for both cohorts, the recent cohort had a prognostically favorable "zero-time shift." In addition, by demonstrating metastases that had formerly been silent and unidentified, the new technological data resulted in a stage migration. Many patients who previously would have been classified in a "good" stage were assigned to a "bad" stage. Because the prognosis of those who migrated, although worse than that for other members of the good-stage group, was better than that for other members of the bad-stage group, survival rates rose in each group without any change in individual outcomes. When classified according to symptom stages that would be unaltered by changes in diagnostic techniques, the two cohorts had similar survival rates.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Delgado-Rodríguez, M., & Llorca, J. (2004) · Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health · doi:10.1136/jech.2003.008466 · Cited by 1,064
Fleischmann-Struzek, C., Mellhammar, L., Rose, N., Cassini, A., Rudd, K. E., Schlattmann, P., Allegranzi, B., & Reinhart, K. (2020) · Intensive Care Medicine · doi:10.1007/s00134-020-06151-x · Cited by 982
Clinical trials in head injury
Narayan, R. K., Michel, M. E., Ansell, B., Baethmann, A., Biegon, A., Bracken, M. B., Bullock, M. R., Choi, S. C., Clifton, G. L., Contant, C. F., et al. (2002) · Journal of Neurotrauma · doi:10.1089/089771502753754037 · Cited by 913
(2001) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(01)06409-1 · Cited by 870
van den Bent, M. J. (2010) · Acta Neuropathologica · doi:10.1007/s00401-010-0725-7 · Cited by 577
Advances in diagnostic imaging and overestimations of disease prevalence and the benefits of therapy
Black, W. C., & Welch, H. G. (1993) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm199304293281706 · Cited by 547
Interpreting trends in cancer patient survival
DICKMAN, P. W., & ADAMI, H. ‐. (2006) · Journal of Internal Medicine · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2796.2006.01677.x · Cited by 508
Misinformation in and about science
West, J. D., & Bergstrom, C. T. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1912444117 · Cited by 391
Large-scale randomized evidence: Large, simple trials and overviews of trials
Peto, R., Collins, R., & Gray, R. (1995) · Journal of Clinical Epidemiology · doi:10.1016/0895-4356(94)00150-o · Cited by 365
Rhee, C., Chiotos, K., Cosgrove, S. E., Heil, E. L., Kadri, S. S., Kalil, A. C., Gilbert, D. N., Masur, H., Septimus, E. J., Sweeney, D. A., et al. (2021) · Clinical Infectious Diseases · doi:10.1093/cid/ciaa059 · Cited by 191
Association of do-not-resuscitate orders and hospital mortality rate among patients with pneumonia
Walkey, A. J., Weinberg, J., Wiener, R. S., Cooke, C. R., & Lindenauer, P. K. (2016) · JAMA Internal Medicine · doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.6324 · Cited by 61
The Will Rogers phenomenon in the staging of breast cancer—does it matter?
Tan, G. H., Bhoo-Pathy, N., Taib, N. A., See, M. H., Jamaris, S., & Yip, C. H. (2015) · Cancer Epidemiology · doi:10.1016/j.canep.2014.11.005 · Cited by 18
Metadata
- Authors
- Feinstein, A. R., Sosin, D. M., & Wells, C. K.
- Venue
- New England Journal of Medicine
- Publisher
- Massachusetts Medical Society
- Published
- 1985-06-20
- Volume
- 312
- Issue
- 25
- Pages
- 1604-1608
- ISSN
- 0028-4793 (ISSN-L)
- 1533-4406
- OpenAlex
- W2314635417
- Cited by
- 1,544
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 26.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
