If you are a woman, which group of radiologists would you rather have read your mammogram? Are you more concerned about the tiny chance that you’ll have a cancer that will be missed, or the much larger probability that you’ll be diagnosed with a cancer you don’t have? There’s no right or wrong answer to that question. Different people have different attitudes toward their own health, and toward risk. What’s crucial, though, is the lesson those numbers teach us about haystack searches. Looking for something rare comes with a price.
The author is grateful for permission to use the following copyrighted material:
Photos: Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles. Reprinted by permission of Paul Ekman, Ph.D./ Paul Ekman Group, LLC.
Photo: “Anger” from Job van der Schalk et al., “Moving Faces, Looking Places: Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES),” Emotion 11, no. 4 (2011): 912. Reproduced by permission of author.
Images: “Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure,” “Sample ROCF immediate recall drawings from the Pre/Post-stress groups,” “Sample ROCF immediate recall drawings from the Stress Group,” from Charles A. Morgan et al., “Stress-Induced Deficits in Working Memory and Visuo-Constructive Abilities in Special Operations Soldiers,” Biological Psychiatry 60, no. 7 (2006): 722–29. Reproduced by permission of Dr. Charles A. Morgan III and Elsevier.
Excerpts from “Edge” [6l.], “Lady Lazarus” [2], “A Birthday Present” [6] from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial material copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harper Collins.
Excerpt from “The Addict,” by Anne Sexton from Live or Die (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright by Anne Sexton.
Graphs: “Relation between gas suicides in England and Wales and CO content of domestic gas, 1960–77”; “Crude suicide rates (per 1 million population) for England and Wales and the United States, 1900–84”; “Suicides in England and Wales by domestic gas and other methods for females twenty-five to forty-four years old” from Ronald V. Clarke and Pat Mayhew, “The British Gas Suicide Story and Its Criminological Implications,” Crime and Justice 10 (1988): 79–116. Reproduced by permission of Ronald V. Clarke, Pat Mayhew, and the University of Chicago Press.
Map: Weisburd Jersey city map from David Weisburd, et al., “Does Crime Just Move Around The Corner? A Controlled Study of Spatial Displacement and Diffusion of Crime Control Benefits,” Criminology 44, no. 3 (2006): 549–91. Reproduced by permission of David Weisburd and the American Society of Criminology.